#whenever Sissi is on stage

[strechanadi]

Inès McIntosh, Mathieu Ganio, Heloïse Bourdon

Mayerling

photo Helena Maria Buckley

[sissytobitch10seconds]

The Morningstar's Rays: The Prodigal Son

Fandom: Hazbin Hotel and Helluva Boss Summary: Love is free in Heaven, it flows between the angels and to the other creatures that God has created. For one Morningstar, it ends up creating a life that none of them thought was even possible. With that comes a host of surprises and problems that he has to overcome to keep that love flowing as naturally as it needs to, and extending it to his son as well. Warnings: Pregnancy, mpreg, intersex characters, sex, graphically described childbirth scenes, social stigmas, and evangelic beliefs Word Count: 13,982 Ship(s): Lucifer Morningstar/Michael, Lucifer Morningstar/Lilith Morningstar, Lucifer Morningstar/Adam (endgame)

Archive link!

A/N: So this is based off a rp that I did with my mutual a while ago, which is why the world is so different than the one that Hazbin Hotel began to show us in the beginning. I really wanted to explore further into Lucifer's backstory and the creation of Hell, so I chose this niche little mpreg fanfic to do that with! It's the beginning of a series that details all of the conceptions, a lot of the pregnancies, and some of the births of Lucifer's children throughout his life. I'm mostly using them as a window into the life that he led before and after the canon so I hope that you're all excited to come on the ride with me! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone <3

Morning was Lucifer’s favorite time of the day.

Days in general were a relatively new construction, having been something that God just came up with. They were as new as the garden and mankind, which was what made Lucifer love them as much as he did. He liked the way that the light from the sun would streak through the windows in Heaven. He liked the way that the birds would woke up and begin to chirp incessantly at his window while they searched for their breakfast. He liked the way that he felt when he rose from his slumber and could see that time had passed. He loved the planning stage of the creation of everything, coming up with ideas was a favorite pass time of his, but he felt so much better when he could see that he had slept through the entirety of the night. Darkness and cold would creep into his very bones whenever the night fell, leaving him exhausted and weary enough to actually sleep.

Allegedly, it was all the same way that it happened down on Earth and the Garden. He had been trying to figure out a way to spend a night in Eden so that he could compare what the morning looked like in his home and his friend’s home. He wanted to know what it was like to be Adam and Lilith, what they saw when they woke next to each other and what it felt like to have the sun on their skin instead of through a pane of glass. 

He slipped from his bed before he remembered that it was not his own. The night before, he had fallen into the sheets with Michael again. The Sword of God wasn’t someone that a lot of angels got to know personally because he had so many responsibilities that he had to tend to. Lucifer was a different story, he was as close to God as someone could be without literally being the Metatron. His dreamer tendencies made it so that God valued his input when it came to creating creatures and items that would one day populate the Earth. Due to that, during the seven days and nights that it took to make everything in creation, Lucifer had grown quite close to Michael.

Love flowed freely in Heaven. There was no need for them to marry because there had never been an angelic baby, thus there was no need for a child to be born in the sanctity of vows to God. They were all the direct servants of God anyway, so they didn’t need to do it again during a wedding ceremony. Marriage was something that was reserved for the first man and woman, Adam and Lilith.

That meant that Lucifer got to visit Michael as often as he wished, even if it was considered for the best if he didn’t broadcast his comings and goings to the rest of the angelic hoard. He knew that part of that was to stop jealousy from arousing in the other angels. Others weren’t as close to God, which had already caused a bit of contention within some of them. Others had even fallen in love with Michael themselves and would no doubt be upset to find out that he had bedded another but refused to even look their way.

Lucifer knew that was silly, but he also had no way to articulate that to others whom had not been there to see what he had. He had been there when Michael had sworn to be the Sword of God, when he had pledged his life to a job that he would serve in until his death. He took that job very seriously and thus did not have time for someone that wouldn’t be passive about their relationship the way that Lucifer was. 

The Morningstar himself liked to have as much attention as he could get and he drank it up every time. He spent a lot of time with other angels, a certain set that got along with him and shared quite a few of his values. They had different ways that they thought his proposed changes should be implemented and they didn’t want to rock the boat as much as he did, but they were willing to listen to him anyway. He had already shared a bed with a few of them as well, though none as often as he shared Michael’s at the moment. The two beings that he preferred to get attention from were the ones that he was meant to be watching and guiding.

He was thankful that God had been rather vague when He asked Lucifer to tend to the humans in the Garden of Eden. It meant that he had room to say that he didn’t quite know what the Almighty had meant. He could flutter his way down to the Garden when he pleased and spend time with Adam and Lilith, who were always elated to see him when he came. Being the center of their world for the moments that he was talking felt even better than when he was presenting in front of the other angels. He liked the way that their eyes felt on him when they roved over the hand motions he made while he spoke, or the way that they would grin when they finally understood something.

Thoughts of what his day would entail was enough to get him out of the bed and on his feet. Michael had been draped over most of the plush mattress, his six wings fluttering in the light breeze that was coming in through the open window. Lucifer had tucked his wings in, as he did every time that he went to bed, so that they would be more space for him.

The other angel being as spread out as he was did make it more difficult for him to slip out without being seen. He had been doing this for quite some time, though, so he managed to roll from the bed and catch himself before he reached the floor. 

He carefully sprang to his feet and then grabbed the robe that he always wore. The humans had to invent everything that they wanted to work with, so they were not provided with the wonderful amenities that Heaven included yet. According to the High Seraphim, they would receive them once they did something that would warrant them becoming a Saint. Lucifer wondered how many of the babies that Lilith and Adam made together would get to come to the wonderful Kingdom, he was already excited to meet them again even if it meant that they had to die.

He slipped out of Michael’s home and into the streets of Heaven. The sky above was the palest, most delicate blue that could be perceived by the Heavenly mind. The ground was made of evenly constructed bricks of cold and white tile, which made the entire thing shimmer. The buildings around the place that Lucifer was in were low down to the ground and hued with blue and pink, some of them gold to indicate some of the higher level angels that lived within. The angelic homes were segregated into a different part of Heaven so once the humans had been created and began to ascend to Sainthood, they wouldn’t have to deal with a creature that was so different than themselves.

Lucifer walked through the weaving streets, walking around and around in a massive circle, before he finally reached his own home. It was the same as all the others were, though the roof and window sills were gilded in gold instead of the baby blue that surrounded him. He slipped in through the door and then shed the robe that he had worn before, leaving it for the principalities that had been made to help care of the angels that had more important jobs. He then picked out another one of them and laid it down on his untouched bed, though he mused the covers so it looked as though he was just being tidy instead of having spent the night in another place entirely.

He walked to the basin that held the water pitcher and bowl in it, using it to wash his face and hands. He also made sure to clean the last of the stickiness that Michael had missed the night before from between his legs. The angel was kind enough to try and wash him off despite them both being exhausted from going three rounds without sleep after a full day of work, so who was Lucifer to complain about him missing a massive streak of cum along his inner thigh.

Once he was clean, he dressed in his robes and then said his quick prayer to God. He thanked his Father every day, just to affirm that he was grateful for the life that he had been given. It was something all the angels did, even the ones that were close enough to God to actually talk to Him.

His morning routine was completed as quickly as he could because he already had a fun day planned for himself down in the Garden. He managed to slip his way through his fellow angels often enough that he could spend a good deal of his time there. It didn’t seem as though anyone really cared as long as he was able to give them his plans and ideas at the next meeting that they held. The only person that would really care was Michael because he was charged with protecting God’s favorite pastime, which was currently the humans, but he didn’t seem to care much either.

So Lucifer once again slipped from his home after grabbing an apple from the bowl in the center of his dining room table. Angels didn’t have to eat so that they could survive, but they were told that it would make the humans that would eventually ascend to the Heavens as Saints more comfortable to see the angels doing something akin to what they had done their whole lives. Lucifer didn’t mind, especially recently.

He had discovered some of the wonderful foods that God had placed down in the Garden for Adam and Lilith. The apple was his favorite, delectably sweet and crunchy and tart at the same time. He wasn’t sure if anything would ever come to top it, especially when the core was fun to gnaw on after all the flesh had been devoured.

Some of the other angels had also risen from their slumbers and were milling about with each other. There were a couple already standing by the meeting room as they got prepared to give the orders out to the lower ranking principalities and archangels. As he passed by, Lucifer greeted each of them in turn. The rank of Seraphim had only been given to a handful of angels at that point, not including the special beings that had been given specific jobs by God. Michael and The Metatron were the two that came to mind immediately, but Lucifer barely even considered them to be angels at that point because they rarely strayed into the lives of others.

“Lucifer!” Beelzebub chirped when she saw her friend. She had long blond hair that puffed up around her head and fell into her face, almost imitating fennec fox ears. Her eyes were wide and golden, sparkling with a kind of desire to drink in everything that they could witness at all times. She was wearing a similar robe to Lucifer but it was faded pink instead of only gold.

“Bee!” he responded to her, throwing his arms out to the side of him. She squealed as she was able to wrap him up in a hug. “What are you doing here? I thought that you were going to be experimenting with food today since it was your day off.”

She looked a little put out when he reminded her of what she had said yesterday. He wondered if she had gotten in trouble again, it had already happened a couple of times. He knew that some of the other Seraphim were beginning to push back on what they were told to do. It was the influence of the humans, Lucifer was sure of that. He knew that they all respected God, He was their creator and thus had to be respected. The humans asked questions and inspired them to do things that they hadn’t done before, which meant that they were pushing boundaries that they hadn’t known existed before that point.

She turned her head back to Sera and gave a little wave, “I had a dear friend come and ask me for some help with giving out the orders to the Cherubim, so I decided that I would come and do that instead. After all, we are all God’s servants and must put aside our own desires for Him.”

“Of course,” Lucifer nodded. “I hope that you are able to help Sera the way that she needs.”

The words felt like ash as he spoke them. The apple that he had eaten while he was walking over to the entrance to the Garden from Heaven felt like it was sitting a stone in his belly. Almost to the point where the skin over his hips felt stretched and bloated, but he was sure that he was simply making that up. He had been feeling that way for a very long time, but he wasn’t sure where it had originated from. He loved Heaven and he loved being a servant of God because it meant that he got to do all the wonderful things that he did. 

At the same time, he could see how being called to do the bidding of someone that they rarely got any affection from was hurting his friends. Mammon and Leviathan appeared to be struggling most of all, but now Beelzebub was looking as though someone had just told her she was never permitted to indulge in sugar ever again.

Lucifer reached out and gave her hand a gentle squeeze before he continued on his way. He needed to drown out his sorrows with other voices, something that he did often. He spent his time in the Garden so he could not only come up with ideas, spurred on by Adam and Lilith, but so that he could get the voices of the other angels out of his head and settle himself.

He wanted to stay with Beelzebub and argue that she should get to actually spend her day off doing what she liked. She worked every other day of the month doing her actual job, she didn’t need to help Sera with her own jobs as well. It was unfair to keep her from doing something that she loved just because God or someone under him had asked them to do something else. They should be able to say no.

He knew that they couldn’t, that his pushback on some of his assignments had already gotten him shoved to the edge of the inner circle. So he didn’t say anything and simply continued on his way towards the door that would lead him to Eden.

The door was built into the side of a wall, the one that ringed all the way around the settlement where the angels lived and did their business. It was taller than Lucifer by three or four times and intricately carved with all of the creations that God and the other angels had placed in the garden. The left side held the plants, so there were pops of color as the flowers and buds of fruit were illustrated to bring attention to them. The other side was entirely made up of animals that were all chasing each other to demonstrate the way that the food chain worked. The prey animals were the closest to the seam of the door with the prey animals that ate both plants and meat in between, then the predators behind them furthest away from the plant side. It was technically a portal down to earth, but they had manifested it into a door for the ease of the angels that were coming and going as they checked on the humans inside. 

Lucifer checked the panel on the side of the door to make sure that none of the other angels had already gone through. They had once only come to check on the semi-immortal duo once a week, when they weren’t in their meetings while trying to figure out what to introduce to them. That had changed recently with some revelations of what was happening in the Garden thanks to Leviathan. Lilith and Adam seemed to be getting along about as well as some of the fish in the bigger rivers did, but it was nothing that Lucifer couldn’t smooth over. He was a showman at heart and loved having the attention on him, especially when he was hanging around people that he believed to be his friends. It was happening less and less frequently with the other Seraphim, but more and more frequently with the new humans in the Garden.

He pulled on the heavy metal handle and then stepped through the magical barrier that swirled with yellow, purple, and green. When he reached the other side, he appeared in the Garden of Eden down on earth.

The Garden was full of flush vegetation, every item that had been on the door outside flourishing inside. 

To the left was a dense forest with almost every type of tree, clustered in little bundles so that they could thrive by themselves and not have to battle with the others. On the ground was sorrel and lichen and struggling grass that stretched up futility towards the sun that was being blocked from it. Vines and ivy had their way with the low hanging branches and thick trunks so that they could escape the massive ferns and bushes threaded between the thickets. A few colorful birds darted out of the larger trees and rabbits and mice hid amongst the smaller ones. Water could be heard trickling inside of the forest, hidden by the dancing shadows and critters scurrying about so that they could hide from the newcomer.

To the right was a meadow where the grass was thick and so vibrantly green that it almost hurt to look at. There were flowers dotted in clustered patches, imitating much smaller versions of what the trees were doing on the other side. They were a variety of different colors and Lucifer already knew that Adam had named quite a few of them himself. There were bright red poppies, stunning violets, orange and purple tulips, stark daffodils, and even a bush full of pretty pink weeping hearts. The animals in the meadow were delicately eating from it and lazing about in the sun, basking as they should have been.

Lucifer took a moment to breathe in the sweet scent of something new and fresh, as he always did when he came to the Garden. He loved Heaven, it was his home, but it didn’t compare to the place where God had chosen to put His most treasured creations. Nothing would ever compare to the smell of rain after it had just fallen or the way that the grass would brush through the nice wind that came from the desert surrounding the Garden.

He embarked into the meadow half of the world in front of him so that he could find the camp that Adam had set up. It was a wondrous thing, to watch the First Man and Woman make what humans would begin using for years and years to come afterwards. Lucifer didn’t know what God had planned for when that time came, no one other than the Heavenly Father Himself did, but he was excited to get to see it.

The camp was relatively close to the stream that fed the meadow’s plants, sheltered on a patch of ground that no longer had grass growing on it because of how often Adam had walked over it. There was a hut made out of sticks and leaves, woven so thickly together that they created a good roof when the Garden got rain. There was a firepit, currently stacked with kindling for that night’s dinner but left empty for the time being. Over the top of it was a clay pot made for boiling and cooking, also empty for the time being.

Lucifer turned his craned his neck as he carefully walked into the camp and looked for the human. He knew that Adam liked to jump out at him sometimes, he found it amusing when he startled the angel according to the man himself, but Lucifer didn’t care for the feeling it left him with. When he was sure that he was safe from being scared, he began to trace Adam’s footprints up the side of the river while hoping it would actually lead to his friend.

There was always a chance that he was following a long cold trail when he tried to track his friend, but he had high confidence that he was going to get it right that time. Lilith had been teaching him how to better recognize something that had been left two days ago instead of thinking that everything was fresh. According to her, it was very important that they know where the prey was for eating and where the predators were for their own protection.

It didn’t take long before Lucifer finally stumbled across his friend. Adam was sitting with his legs stretched out in front of him, ankle deep in the river as it flowed merrily along to the other edge of the garden. He was wearing a tunic made of roughly woven cloth, probably using the grass that grew so abundantly in the land around his makeshift hut. He had a flower grasped in his fingers, twirling it back and forth as he examined it even closer.

Lucifer stepped behind him and tilted his head down so that they were staring at each other, Adam from the ground and Lucifer from above. “Hello, friend,” he beamed.

“I was wondering when you were going to be coming back to visit us, angel,” Adam grinned in reply. Lucifer could see the way that the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes, the way that his mouth dipped down immediately afterwards.

He shucked off his sandals and then sat down beside his friend, giving him a worried look. “Adam, something is bothering you.”

“It’s nothing, promise,” he shrugged. He set the flower down between the two of them, keeping the stem underneath his palm so that the wind wouldn’t pick it up.

“It’s not nothing if it is making you sad,” Lucifer replied, touching his pale fingers to Adam’s, which had been long-tanned by the sun in the Garden.

He sighed and laid back down on the ground, passing the flower over to Lucifer. “I tried to be romantic with Lilith so that she might decide to like me more, but it didn’t work. I named this after her, I called it a lily.”

“That’s very pretty, a very good name for a flower that looks like this,” Lucifer confirmed. The flower had several thin petals that left a lot of gap between them, branching out and curling back so that their points were almost touching the base. The inside of the flower had several long stems covered in golden pollen and green feelers. The petals themselves were a speckled white and pink color, the white taking over towards the edges.

“She didn’t think so. She said that she would find me again for dinner but that she needed to be by herself for now,” Adam explained. Lucifer could see the turmoil happening inside of the man and wished that he knew how to help.

He kept the flower in his fingers as he crossed his arms and balanced them on his knees. He tilted his head down so that he was looking sideways at Adam. It was hard to get his thoughts into line when he was feeling like this, so taking a moment to simply breathe in the sweet air of the world around them was helping him get it all into order. “Do you think that maybe she’s pregnant?” he asked. It felt like a stupid question, given how many fights the two of them had, but it was also what they had been put into the Garden for.

Adam shrugged helplessly. He threw his arms out to the side of his body and picked at the grass with both hands, just to have something to do. “How would you even tell something like that? I know God told us the main one, but I’m never around Lilith enough to see if she’s stopped bleeding,” the man huffed.

Lucifer suppressed a shudder at the mention of that. Angels had been created with both sets of genitals and a main presentation so that they were more humanoid for the future Saints of Heaven. They didn’t have cycles the way that some mammals did, no heats or periods to speak of. Lucifer couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have to walk through life knowing that every thirty days one would start bleeding for a week. He was glad that he never had to deal with that even if he did have the libido fluctuations that normally came with that having a menstrual cycle.

“I think that there are some other signs. Other than her belly getting bigger, of course. I’ve heard that odd dreams are something that might happen, as well as her nails and hair growing faster because she’s growing another person. Then there’s also an increase in appetite and some mood changes,” Lucifer then answered. “That was why I asked. Maybe she didn’t want the flower because she was pregnant.”

“Maybe you’re pregnant,” Adam said. His face had split into that grin that was almost too big for his face, mischievous and happy. He cuddled closer to Lucifer while poking at his body and making him squirm.

The angel laughed as the sensation caused his nerves to spasm and bat at the man’s hand. Eventually they stopped, a bit closer to the river than they had been before but not quiet inside of it yet. Lucifer sat back up, dusting off the gold and blue robe that he had dawned that morning. He asked, “Why do you think that I’m pregnant, Adam?”

“Your hair is longer, angel,” Adam replied. He reached up and brushed back a long of golden hair with his calloused fingers, which made golden blood rush to his cheeks and tint them dark.

“I’m sure that’s just because I haven’t cut it in a while. It’d be a very rapid growth,” Lucifer shook his head. Something about what Adam had said, likely as a joke to make him uncomfortable on purpose, was squirming its way under his skin. He had noticed that it was getting harder to write when he was sketching his ideas for upcoming meetings because his nails had gotten longer before they usually did.

Adam laughed and then set his head down on his friend’s chest. Adam had always been close with him, ready to touch and be touched in return. They had never done anything like what Lucifer did with Michael, but he had to admit that there were times when he wanted to. “I think that you’ve got a bit of a belly too, like this,” he said as he smoothed his hand down Lucifer’s stomach from just under his flat chest to where his cock lay flaccid under the robe.

The Morningstar took in a sharp breath as he tried not to think about how close Adam was to some very sensitive parts of his body. He thought that the night he had spent with Michael was more intense than the ones previous had been, but he had assumed that was because it had been longer in between sessions at the time. “Angels can’t get pregnant,” he finally said.

“Why not?”

“We don’t have menstrual cycles the same way that humans do,” Lucifer said. Some part of his mind knew that it wasn’t quite the whole truth. An angel likely should be able to get pregnant simply because they had all the parts to do so, including what was inside. Perhaps there was some other part of their physicality that let them conceive even if they didn’t have a specific time where their body released an ova.

The man gave a shrug and then flopped back down onto the cool grass. “Do you want to come hunting with me today? I think I know a thicket of blackberries that you can hang out in instead of doing the heavy lifting,” Adam teased. The smile was slightly different, once again dimming from when he had been teasing Lucifer.

He didn’t want to have to tell him no, he wanted to say that he would love to spend the rest of the day walking around with Adam in the forest and the meadow, but he had other things he had to attend to. “I have a meeting soon,” he lied, which also felt bitter on his tongue but somehow not as much as what he had said to Bee did. “I think that I’m going to visit Lilith and then head back to Heaven. But I’ll come visit you again soon.”

“Do you promise?” Adam asked, dark eyes begging for the answer that he was only half sure was coming to him.

Lucifer grinned and nodded, just as he always did. There was very little in either realm that he inhabited that would keep him from coming to see his friend. He stood up and brushed his clothing off as he began to walk to the place that Lilith frequented when she had enough of her husband for the day. Lucifer didn’t really understand why she felt that way, but he assumed that every human was different the same way that every angel was different.

As he walked, he began to think more about what Adam had said to him. His nails and hair were growing faster than they had previously, and the rest of his body was changing as well. His nipples and the tissue around them felt more sensitive, like someone was electrocuting him every time they brushed their fingers against them even if it was through clothing. He grew more interested in the idea of sex and proximity the longer that the months wore on as well. He also couldn’t deny what Adam had said about the rounding of his belly, even if it was still caused by what he had assumed it was before.

By the time that he reached Lilith, he had realized with a wave of crippling fear that he was pregnant despite thinking that angels did not possess that ability until that very moment. He was glad that he was with the more sullen of the two humans when he came to that realization so that he could talk to someone about it seriously instead of having Adam’s constant need for humor interfering with it.

Lilith was sitting on the highest branch of the tree that would support her weight. She had her head leaned against the trunk, her arm wrapped around it for extra support. She was staring straight ahead at the vast desert that surrounded the Garden with a wistful expression on her face. She had something similar to Adam covering her body, but had wrapped it around every part of her body that was going to be touching the tree so she didn’t get scraped up as she climbed.

Lucifer squatted down slightly and then launched into the air with his wings propelling him up higher. He sat on the branch that was on the other side of the tree and slightly higher than her own. “Hello Lilith,” he greeted with a shy smile falling over his features.

“Hello, Luci,” she beamed back at him. She was so beautiful when she smiled, almost enchanting with the curve and shimmer that it brought with her. “How did your visit with Adam go?”

“He said that he was sorry for what he did to upset you,” Lucifer replied. Adam hadn’t said that exactly and hadn’t sent Lucifer to deliver the message, but the angel figured that it would help patch up what was wrong with his friends. He wanted to keep the lily that Adam had gifted him, but he knew it would do more good and bring more joy if it was in her possession. “And he said to give you this.”

She sighed as she took the flower from him. She spun it back and forth in two of her fingers as she brought the bud to her nose to sniff the sweet smell from the center of the bud. “He certainly is dedicated, isn’t he?”

“Why are you so discontent with him?” Lucifer asked. While he was beginning to question the Will of God himself, he knew that the two humans had been created for each other and thus should have been able to get along better than they were currently.

The woman huffed and brushed her long golden hair back over her shoulder. She tucked the flower between her ear and her hair so that it was stuck there while she spoke. “He doesn’t want to let me be as free as I need to be happy. He tries to stop me from creating what I want, from hunting as I wish, and from exploring outside of the Garden.”

“Outside the Garden?” Lucifer gasped. He definitely agreed with Adam on that matter, even if he could see why not letting her have a bigger say in their shared business would be a problem for her. “Lilith, there is nothing out there but sand dunes!”

“What if there isn’t?” she asked. She reached around the trunk of the tree and pointed out towards the horizon, where the moon was just barely beginning to peak up. “Can you see it, all the way out there? I want to see what that is. I don’t care if it’s nothing, or if it’s dangerous. I just want to see it.” 

Lucifer knew that they had yet to make anything other than the Garden, it was where everything was concentrated to make sure that it was good to interact with humans before they dispersed more of it amongst the earth. At least, that was what they had assumed God intended for the vast wasteland that lay along the rest of earth. “Maybe I can create something for you,” he grinned. “But you’re going to have to wait a little while longer, I’m afraid.”

The beam that had spread across her face at the idea of him creating something just for her to explore fell as she asked, “Why is that?”

He took the hand that wasn’t wrapped around the trunk of the tree and then placed it on the bottom swell of his belly. “I believe that I am going to have a child. I need to spend the next couple months of my pregnancy preparing to have a baby and conserving my magic to teach them how to use it.”

“Lucifer, when a baby is born they are helpless for months and months. They won’t be able to use magic then,” Lilith laughed as if he had said something particularly foolish.

“You don’t know that,” he shook his head. “There has never been an angelic baby born, we were wall created in our early teenage years and then grew to when we would naturally stop for our jobs and destinies,” he explained. He didn’t know what his babe was going to look like when they were born or what power they would possess at that tiny stage of their life.

They were both quiet for a bit as they considered what was going to happen in the future of their lives. Lucifer felt as though he had something much heavier than Lilith did, but he didn’t know what was going on in her mind and would never assume that he did. Eventually, she sighed and took her hand away from his stomach, “I’ll stay until the baby is old enough to watch after themself. Then, maybe that point you’ll have made something more for me to explore.”

---

Lucifer returned to the Garden as often as he could. Before, he had done it because it was the only place where he could get real inspiration for the things that he needed to make for Earth. 

Now he was doing it because he wanted to spend as little time around the other Seraphim and angels as possible. He had stopped going to visit Michael, worried that his naked body would reveal the life that was growing inside of him. He had stopped hanging out with the other Seraphim as often as he had before as well, usually retreating to his room as soon as he got back and only popping out when he needed to restock the food in his house or go to meetings. The isolation of it all was very hard on him, but he knew that he had to keep it up if he wanted to be safe.

He noticed the changes in his body more than he had before he realized that he was with child. His nails grew at a rate that required he clip them every other day just to make sure that he didn’t accidentally scratch himself and that he could write properly. His hair grew just as quickly, so he had gotten very adept at cutting it himself even though Beelzebub had always done it for him prior. He began to wear his clothing baggier and baggier without making a big deal out of it. He was glad that everyone in Heaven already wore loose fitting robes, it made it easier to hide his belly when it began to bloom.

He could understand how he thought his increase in appetite was the thing that was making his body change the way it was now that he was in the later stages of his pregnancy. His belly had started as a bloating in between the expanse of his hips and then turned into a teardrop, getting smaller the closer that it got to his diaphragm. He knew that there was going to be a ‘popping’ of sorts now that he was over halfway, but it felt as though it had all happened overnight. His stomach had turned from the teardrop shape into something totally round, to the point where it was obvious he was expecting a baby when he wasn’t wearing his robes.

Lucifer entered through the door that led to the Garden of Eden as he had done most days since his pregnancy began. He was uncomfortable and upset, this time because he was so horny he thought he was going to die. He hadn’t realized how cathartic it was for him to be having an orgasm or two every night for a couple of years before he was no longer getting that. It wasn’t as though he hadn’t tried to keep up on the habit, but he fell asleep every time he got into bed after a long day and he could barely even reach his cock or his cunt any longer.

He tried to keep a happy smile on his face as he walked through the Garden to find where his friends were. They had gotten along a lot better now that they both knew that Lucifer was expecting a baby, almost as if they had rallied together to support him as he went through that rather tumultuous time in his life. Just as they had been for the last couple of weeks, he found them together in a glade of grass and poppy flowers.

“Lucifer,” Lilith beamed as she saw him. She was wearing a simpler version of the clothing that she had made to protect her when she was climbing trees. They had a blanket spread out over the soft grass to stop any bugs from crawling over them as easily and to stop the grass from poking unpleasant places.

“Hello Lilith, Hello Adam,” he said as he sat down on the edge of the blanket. He set his staff down next to him and then removed the first layer of his robe so that it was more open, tilting himself up towards the sun. “I didn’t know that pregnancy was going to make me so hot.”

“In more ways that one,” Lilith giggled, her yellow eyes roving over his body.

He raised a brow at her as he tilted his head towards her, “You find me more attractive now that I have a huge watermelon strapped to my stomach than you did when I was all slender.”

He had been expected Adam to laugh or tease them as he normally did when they flirted with each other. It was something special that Lucifer shared with the humans, the ability to imply that they might share some of the intimacies that he had with Michael or what they were supposed to be doing with each other. Instead, Adam reached out and placed his hand on Lucifer’s swollen belly as he said, “You’re glowing, Lucifer. Not in the angelic way either, there’s something different about you now that you’re pregnant.”

“If that different thing means that all the horniness is building up inside of me so that I’m about to explode then we can agree on something,” he complained lightheartedly. He was trying to not pay too much attention to the way that Adam’s tenderness and compliment was making his heart flutter madly in his chest. He was having a baby and Adam had never shown any desire to be intimate with him in that kind of way, so he wouldn’t push it even though he wanted to.

“You’re horny?” Lilith asked, her hand still trailing up and down his thigh like it was going to lead somewhere. Lucifer couldn’t imagine where, he felt like he was one of the whale’s that Leviathan had pitched for the ocean during their last meeting.

“Terribly so,” he whined. He should have known better than to do something that intimate with the humans even if he joked about it with them all the time. He knew that they were barely supposed to even interact with him, but it was so hard when that want and desire was sitting so heavily in his gut. It was like it was radiating out of him, as if he had turned into the sun but made out of lust.

“What happened to the person that got you into this situation?” Lilith asked as she continued the motions with her hand. She inched forward on the blanket every couple of words so that they got closer and closer together. Lucifer could feel the heat of her body leaking off of her and into his own, which made him forget about his worries of it proceeding all the more.

“I can’t go to him, he’s an angel,” Lucifer said. He wasn’t going to tell her who had fathered his child, he was hoping that she would just take that as a good enough answer. No one was even supposed to know that he and Michael were being intimate together. That was only half of the reason that Lucifer had kept the pregnancy a secret from Heaven.

“Mm, I’m glad that you felt like you could come to me about it, then,” Lilith smirked. She leaned in and pressed a kiss to his cheek. It felt different than when Michael had kissed him there, her lips chapped and almost painful against his silk-smooth skin. He didn’t mind it though because the pain shot through his body and right to his cunt, making him leak dramatically over his smalls.

He let out a breathy gasp as his head fell backwards to allow her to have more room. She then shifted so that her legs were over the top of his and her hands were on either side of his shoulders. She had caged him in, like she was a predator and he was her prey. Lucifer had never known how much he was going to enjoy the idea of that until he was stuck in the middle of it.

“Are you okay with little old me being the one to do the honors, angel?” she asked, brushing her hand down the side of his body and hovering near his belly.

“Please, Lilith. I think that if I don’t cum within the hour then I’m going to break,” he whispered. It honestly did feel like there was a fire burning inside of him that was going to burst out and shatter him if he didn’t get a handle on it.

She didn’t need to be told twice. She leaned down and caught his lips on top of her own, which reminded him once again that she was a human and thus inherently flawed. He didn’t mind it as he surged forward to chase after her lips, just to make it last a little bit longer. The way that she was touching his body felt electric and he wanted to drown himself in the feeling of it all.

She grinned when she pulled away from the kiss. She sat back on her haunches and then pulled the makeshift clothing off of her body, tossing it to the side. Nakedness wasn’t something that was considered indecent in the Garden, mostly because Lilith and Adam had to make their own clothing. When the weather was good and they weren’t doing anything that might result in them getting nicked or scratched, they often walked around their camps in nothing.

To Lucifer, though, it was the most delicious thing that he had ever seen. Adam and Lilith had been made with the same genital configuration as the angels, though they had been given it so that they could produce at least two babies at the same time instead of one baby every year. Lilith had the female presenting body, which was why she was meant to be following Adam’s lead. Her breasts were shapely and round, hanging off of her body so that it was obvious that the point of them led to her red areola and nipple. The rest of her body was a pale milky white, different from the dark tan that Adam had gotten from all his time spent out in the sun. She had beautiful hips and a trail of black hair that led down to where her cock was pointing up towards her bellybutton, already leaking.

“Should we see what you have under here, angel? I think I’d rather like to see the rest of that beautiful body,” Lilith purred as she began to pull at the rest of Lucifer’s wrapping. He moved his hips up and tugged at the fabric as well, just to get it off of him as quickly as he could. He wanted to be close to someone the same way that he had been before he had gotten pregnant, and that meant shedding the clothing that kept him safe from view of others.

When the fabric was finally off of him and pooling around them in sizable piles, Lilith pulled away to look over her partner. He could feel the yellow of her eyes taking in the perkiness of his own nipples, the way that his chest had swollen with milk for the babe inside of him despite having months to go. He could almost feel her tongue on him when he noticed the way she licked her lips at the sight of his hard cock straining against his belly.

Lucifer could feel the anticipation coiling in his gut the same way that he had when he was staring at the edge of a cloud, thinking about what it might be like to fly. He had been the first of his brethren to take flight, the first to show them what their wings were meant for and the first to experience the joy of a freefall.

He was given the same amount of ecstasy that time as he had when he had flown, a hand wrapped around his swollen member and the head drawn into the warm mouth of the first woman. He let out a cry as pleasure shocked through his system. His hands scrambled for a bit of purchase and he ended up balling up the material of the blanket underneath them so that his nails didn’t dig into his palms. He could feel his cock continuing to leak as Lilith drew it further and further into her mouth, spurred on by the little sounds that he was making.

When her nose hit his swollen belly, she reached the end of his member with her tongue. She licked all the way up his shaft until her tongue reached his slit, digging into it so that she could smear the pearly precum over her tongue and lips. She grinned wickedly at him when she pulled off so that she could ask, “How did you like that?”

“If you keep going like that then I’m not going to be able to last for very long,” he breathed. “I wasn’t kidding when I said that I was so horny I thought I might die.”

“As long as you can finish me off in turn, I don’t care how long you end up lasting,” she grinned in reply.

The Morningstar released the blanket and then hefted himself up onto his elbows so that he could better see her. It tilted his bump down slightly and gave her a different amount of access to his cock, completely blocking off his cunt from her. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t able to pleasure him in both places at once, though, because he got to see what she looked like when her hands began to wander.

Lilith took the head of his cock back into her mouth, swirling her tongue around the different texture of skin that the glans held. Her hand traveled to her breasts, pulling twice at each nipple so that they were as pert as his own before she moved on. Her mouth moved up and down his cock while her hands had a mind of her own, reaching her cunt underneath her erection. She spread her lips apart and then stuffed two fingers into herself at once, Lucifer could hear the squelch of her juices even if he wasn’t able to see what she was doing entirely.

The view that he had been provided was quickly replaced by an overwhelming rush of pleasure so strong that it whited out his vision. He let out a gasp and bucked his hips forward to chase after the pleasure. The wire that was ever-present in the recesses of his gut was tightening more and more the longer that the pleasure continued. He could feel it as it reached the height, right before it snapped and released the orgasm that he had been waiting months for.

He moaned loud and long as he collapsed back onto the blanket. His cunt clenched around nothing as the wetness that plagued him every time he shifted the wrong direction leaked down his thighs. The mouth on his cock sucked harder as his member twitched and spurted hot cum deep into Lilith’s mouth.

She pulled off of him with the same cat-like grin that she had sported when she had pounced on her prey in the first place. She was still fingering herself, two digits buried into her cunt and her thumb brushing over her cock. “Was that what you needed, angel?” she asked, almost breathless.

“It was, it was wonderful,” Lucifer nodded. He turned and kissed her, which quickly escalated. It had started as their lips pushed against one another and then their heads bucking back and forth as they tried to consume one another. Soon enough, someone had opened their mouth and now their tongues were swirling together in a dance of intimacy that felt almost as if it should have been against the rules. Lucifer could taste himself on her tongue and that simply spurred him on further.

He let his own hands explore her body, the divots of her hips and the dimples on her back. His favorite thing about her body that he hadn’t already seen was her cunt, glistening with her arousal and red from where she had been abusing it while she got him off. It was shaped similar to his, but the second set of folds was longer than the first and made it easier for him to find where she would be pleasured best.

Lucifer leaned down and licked up the length of her cock before he took the head into his mouth. Instead of delving deeper the way that she had with his own member, he simply sucked on the tip. He replaced her fingers with his own after tracing the rim of her vagina a couple of times, just to tease her and see how much she could leak before she got frustrated.

He plunged his fingers as deep into her as they would go and then began to fuck her with them. He curled them forward, back, to the side, and rubbed them against all of her walls. He kept suckling on her cock and watching the way that her face contorted with either discomfort or pleasure to learn what was working best for her. It was the first time that he had played with a pussy outside of his own, Michael had never allowed himself to be put in the rather more submissive position that Lucifer himself often took.

His eyes never strayed away from Lilith’s supple form as he fucked her. He paid attention to the way that his fingers were when she let out one of her gasping moans and how she reacted when he rubbed that spot while sucking the tip of her cock. Eventually, he felt the signature twitch that penises made when they were about to ejaculate, so he pulled off and let the pearly white or her cum decorate her stomach and the blanket next to her. He kept his fingers inside, rubbing the spot inside of her that made her almost scream with pleasure.

When she came down from the high, she let out a contented sigh and collapsed properly back down against the blanket. “Thank you for that, angel. I didn’t know how much I needed it until I had gotten it.”

“I’m here to help. Not that you didn’t also do me a favor,” he teased back. It was easy to do that kind of thing with Lilith, she smiled at his jokes even if they were bad and her laugh made him feel so special. He stretched his arms above his head and then cringed when he felt the crumbling, flaking between his legs from the cum that had dried there during his turn. “I’m going to go clean off. I’ll see you the next time I come to the garden?”

“You’d better, especially if our next visit goes anything like this one did,” she winked mischievously at him.

Lucifer felt his cheeks tinge pink as he turned around and quickly walked in the direction of the river. He was going to have to delve further into his thoughts and feelings for the humans that he had surrounded himself with. He had a lot going in his mind already, though, so he figured that it could wait a little bit.

---

By the time that Lucifer hit eight months pregnant, he was absolutely exhausted. He found it a struggle to avoid falling asleep during the meetings that he had with the other angels. He spent most of his time down in the Garden either eating the foods that the humans offered him or dosing with one of them in the shade. 

There was also a fair bit of time that he spent with Lilith buried in him, either her tongue or fingers or cock. He had yet to figure out what it meant when his heart fluttered while she laughed or his stomach became twisted in knots when he thought of her. He just knew that he liked the way he felt when he was around her, the same way that he liked being around Adam but also somehow different. He knew that for the time being, he could find protection and solace amongst the humans of the Garden.

He stumbled through the door of the Garden after writing his name down underneath the other lines he had already left. If any other angel that was as high as him had as much interest in the Garden as he did, then he surely would have already gotten caught and interrogated about why he was spending so much time with the humans suddenly. Thankfully, he was the only one that wanted to go and visit Adam and Lilith that much so the markings had gone unnoticed.

As soon as the door had shut behind him, he unwound some of the heavy material from his robes so that his belly and skin could breath. He felt huge, like he had become one of the stars in the sky that he had gotten his namesake from. He knew that wasn’t true, he was just more aware of his body than he would have been if the change was a bit more gradual. While the majority of his brain was not enthused about the idea of him looking as he did, he knew that it was better that the baby make him swell than to be born quite yet. He had only just barely fashioned a cot for them to sleep in and hadn’t quite figured out how he was going to introduce an angelic baby to the rest of his friends.

He walked through the grassy forest of the Garden until he came across the home that Adam had made for himself. He walked a bit further so that he was near the river, standing on the grass that made up the area around the frequently tread path. He slowly lowered himself down and then let out a long sigh as he tried to find a comfortable position.

It wasn’t long before one of his friends found him, Adam returning from the foraging that he had done for his evening meal. “I was wondering when you were going to show up today. Have you had any more of those pains from yesterday?”

“No, I think it was only a false alarm,” Lucifer sighed. He didn’t know how angelic pregnancies differed from the ones that the first man and woman would experience, but God had mentioned something about pains happening before labor began. He’d only have two of them while he was the Garden and one when he was trying to sleep later that night, which made for a total of three. He doubted that his baby was going to be making an appearance after such a lackluster announcement.

“That lets me have a bit more time with you, then,” Adam grinned as he sat down beside his friend. “How are you feeling?”

“Better than I was yesterday, I promise. I’m about done being pregnant, though. I would like the baby to stay in there for only a couple more days and then I’m done,” Lucifer placed one hand on the top of his rounded stomach, which was exposed to the warm air and son of the Garden.

Adam’s hand lifted and nervously moved towards his friend before Lucifer tugged him into position. The angel quickly shifted them around so that he was between Adam’s legs and the man was behind him. He leaned back against his friend as he took both of Adam’s hands and placed them underneath his bump. “Do you want to feel how heavy the baby is?” he asked.

“How would I do that? They’re still inside of you,” Adam argued.

“Just lift up really gently,” Lucifer replied. He was unable to stop the grin from spreading over his pale features. It was something that he had discovered when he had been experimenting with different ways to wrap his robe around himself. He had placed one of the stretches of fabric underneath his heavy belly and then pulled up, which distributed the weight of his baby in a different way that actually relieved some of the tension in his back and hips.

A beat passed where Adam was likely deliberating about whether or not Lucifer was pulling his leg. Eventually, he did as he was asked and slowly pressed upwards with his hands. Lucifer let out a moan close to the noise that he made when he was orgasming as the weight was finally lifted from him. “Woah, they really are solid in there,” Adam commented as he hefted the weight gently in his hands. 

“You’re telling me. It gets annoying when they’ve been rattling around in there and kicking me all night,” he chuckled.

Adam looked to be in amazement that his friend’s body was doing something so intricate so naturally. It was just a small taste of what would likely happen in his mind when he or Lilith had their first baby. He placed Lucifer’s stomach back where it belonged but didn’t remove his hands, allowing them to rest on the top of the bump. “What do you think you want to name the baby when they come?”

“I was thinking something like Satan or Damon, I like both of those names,” Lucifer said.

“They don’t sound very angelic, too harsh on the tongue,” Adam shook his head. “What about something like Asmodeus?”

Just then, the baby gave a sharp kick to the center of Adam’s left palm, as if approving of the name that their father’s friend had given them.

Lucifer laughed and settled further back against his friend. “I think that he likes it. I like the name Asmodeus, it fits with the rest of the Seraphims.”

“They kicked me! Lucifer, they kicked me,” Adam beamed. He leaned down so that his head was closer to his friend’s swollen belly. He spoke directly to the baby, though his dark green eyes were flickering over to Lucifer with every word so that he could see what the angel thought of his actions. “I’m very excited to meet you, little one. I’ve heard that you’ve been causing your papa here a lot of grief and that’s not very nice. Be better to him and maybe I can show you some of the prettiest flowers in the garden when you decide to make your appearance.”

Lucifer felt as if his entire heart was going to burst in his chest when he saw how sweet Adam was being about the baby. Lilith was kind enough, but it seemed as though the thing that excited her most about his pregnancy was how horny it made him instead of the idea of another life coming into the world. It was nice to know that not only did Adam care about him enough to take care of him, but also cared about his unborn baby. He couldn’t want to see what the first man would do when he conceived his first child.

He had almost drifted off into the dozing form that was always tugging on him when he realized where the sun had gotten to. He usually tried to make it to the Garden earlier in the day, but things during his morning had distracted him from getting there on time. The finishing touches on the crib for the baby and his mid-morning nap had taken a lot of his day from him. He had still wanted to come visit Adam, but they had been laying in the grass for almost an hour together. That meant that he was at least twenty minutes late for the meeting that he was supposed to be at so that he could maintain his cover.

He whimpered as he pulled himself out of Adam’s arms, the sudden movement triggering another one of the pains he had experienced the day before. It started at the base of his spine and then spread out in a crescent along his hips before it traveled all the way around his pelvis. The last thing that it did was wrap around his belly and constrict it as tightly as it could. He felt almost like he could feel each divot and limb that the baby had because of how tight his muscles were in that present moment.

He let out a low breath as he tried to get the pain and pressure to leave him alone but to no avail. Adam was up in a second, helping Lucifer stand like he had done the day before. “Are you okay?”

“I have to get back to Heaven. I have a meeting that I’m late for,” he said instead of answering the question that he had been asked. He knew that he wasn’t alright, that something was wrong, but acknowledging it made it all too real. He had been trying to avoid the idea of the actual birth since he had realized that he was carrying his little babe. The logical part of him knew that it would come and there was no other way that the baby would come into the world, but no one had ever done it before and so he was scared.

“I can walk you back to the door,” Adam volunteered.

Lucifer shook his head and gave his friend a shaky smile. “I know that you are only trying to help, but I have to do this alone. If you’re shown being too attached to me then it could mean bad things for us both.”

Adam didn’t look too sure about that but nodded his head anyway. He walked Lucifer back to the camp and helped him get his robe back onto his body in the way that disguised the size of his stomach. Instead of walking back to the gate like he did when he had time or since he had started doing post-pregnancy reveal, Lucifer summoned up a well of his magic and teleported to the outside of the meeting room. 

As soon as his body rematerialized where he had asked it to, he knew that he had made the wrong decision. His hand met the brick wall as bile crept up into the back of his throat. He gagged twice before the contents of his stomach, including the berries that he had shared with Adam on the riverbank, spewed back up and down onto the ground.

It wasn’t impossible for angels to get sick but it was very uncommon. They didn’t have the same type of bodies as the humans had and thus were not susceptible to the same kind of viruses and bacteria. There were a couple of things that they could do that would cripple their bodies or cause adverse reactions. Overindulging in food was one of them, as was overworking their physical forms. It was one of the reasons each of them had a bed and a bathroom in their homes despite not technically needing either of those things to function.

Lucifer himself had only been sick once before. He found out that oranges didn’t agree with his system in the slightest and had become bedridden for an entire week as his body purged it from his system. He had seen Leviathan and Beelzebub both get sick from overworking themselves, though that never seemed to be a problem for Mammon or Belphegor.

The door behind him opened as someone stepped out, likely having heard Lucifer being sick. “Lucifer?” Belphegor’s voice rang out through the hallway that he was standing in. He still hadn’t pulled himself away from the wall as he tried to keep the nausea at bay despite his body trying to cling to it.

“I’m alright,” he managed.

“You most certainly are not. Did you have another orange when you were down in the Garden? Is that why you’re late?” she asked. Her voice was so prim and proper that it almost made Lucifer feel like he was a child being scolded despite them not being family in that way.

“No, I just got ill after I teleported out here. I’m sorry for being late to the meeting, we can go in and things can get started,” he waved her away. He could already feel another one of the pains beginning to creep up his back. He had been under the impression that once labor actually started it would be much slower than what was happening now. Perhaps something had happened with his magic that was expediting the process, which was why he had been so wary of doing anything with it after knowing that he was pregnant.

“Sera can do something without us,” Belphegor replied easily. She placed a hand on Lucifer’s shoulder and said, “They’d likely send me with you anyway, once they found out that you were sick. I’m helping you.”

He couldn’t object to her any more than he already had as another wave of nausea took over him. She gave his arm a brief squeeze before she poked her head into the meeting room again. He could briefly hear her telling the other Seraphim that Lucifer had tried another citrus fruit that really wasn’t agreeing with his system and that she was going to take care of him. Knowing that he would have someone with him when he gave birth was a massive relief, he had to admit that to himself at least.

When Belphegor returned, she took his hand and began to slowly lead him through the winding streets that led to their homes. She opened the door with a swirl of her hand and then brought him to his bathroom. “How else are you feeling, other than the nausea?”

“I have these horrible cramps,” he sighed as he collapsed down onto the closed lit of his toilet.

She nodded her head in understanding as she began to get him out of his robes. “I’ve heard that’s rather common when someone is in labor, as is the nausea. Do you think that you’re going to be sick again?”

“You know?” Lucifer asked. He had never actually told her that he was pregnant or that he was going to be giving birth in the imminent future, so he wasn’t quite sure how she had figured it out.

“Lucifer, I am the angel that has come up with most of the sicknesses and their cures,” she replied. He could see the pain that it still caused her to know that she was responsible for the things that would be taxing the humans once they were populating the earth. He felt the same when it came to the animals that he had created where their only purpose was to fuel the bigger beasts that ate them, including humans. “I knew that you were pregnant the moment that you started spending more time in the Garden. Were you hoping that the humans could help you?”

He shook his head, “I knew that they couldn’t, neither of them have conceived or given birth yet so they’re just as lost as I am. They were the only ones that I thought knew so I tried to find comfort with them.”

His friend looked at him with a sad expression and cupped the side of his face. “You’re not alone anymore, I’m here with you,” she promised.

She finished getting him out of the baggy robes that he wore to hide his belly and then changed him into something far more comfortable. It had a series of buttons and laces on the front that could turn it into multiple different garments but the way that Lucifer wore it allowed it to be somewhat open in the front while also giving him privacy. It was loose fitting around his belly and sensitive chest, but tight enough that it wouldn’t snag on anything.

They paced around his small home while each contraction came and went. Belphegor was by his side the entire time, helping him find something to lean against when the pains came and then helping him stand and move when they were gone. She was able to get him to eat about half an apple and drink an entire glass of water while they worked together. Eventually, his waters broke all over the rug in front of his bed during one of the worst contractions that he’d had yet.

“You’re alright, don’t worry about it. It’s just water and I can get it out later,” Belphegor reminded him when she noticed the way that he was staring down at the growing puddle at his feet.

“Doesn’t this mean that the baby is going to start coming faster?” he asked.

“Not necessarily. And weren’t you just complaining that you didn’t want to have to be in pain anymore? This is the way to do it,” Belphegor chuckled as she led him back to his little bathroom.

He couldn’t say anything to her after that, simply reaching panickily towards the sink. He leaned heavily against it as another contraction tore through his system. The other angel focused on filling his bathtub, which she helped him step into once the water was at a good temperature and level.

That was, of course, when a knock on the door rang through the rest of the house and got both of their attention. Belphegor motioned for him to stay in the tub while she went to investigate, which Lucifer was okay with because he wasn’t sure if he could get up even if he wanted to. He had shifted so that he was on his knees with his legs spread far enough apart that it felt like his pelvis had changed shape completely. He breathed out slowly as he rocked through the contraction, though the water was definitely helping his labor.

“Hello?” Belphegor asked as she opened the door of Lucifer��s home to their unwelcome guest.

“I heard that Lucifer was sick. I was wondering if I could come and be of some assistance,” Michael said.

At the sound of his ex-lover’s voice, a rush of adrenaline and panic rushed through the Morningstar. The last thing that he wanted to deal with was another angel, especially the one that was closest to God outside of His literal voice. As if sensing that he was desiring for someone to go away instead of welcoming the help that was being offered to him by the Allmighty’s hand, the baby slipped lower in Lucifer and he felt something that made him call out for his friend.

She rushed back into the bathroom as quickly as she could, asking, “What? What’s wrong?”

“I think that I can feel the head,” he breathed.

“You didn’t mention anything about needing to push when I got you into the bathtub,” Belphegor nearly chastised as she collapsed down next to the bath beside him. She rinsed her hands off and then reached down into the water of the tub so that she could check Lucifer’s cervix, as she had many times since helping him labor. The only problem with that was the head of the baby preventing her from getting into his vaginal canal in the slightest. She sucked in a sharp breath and then said, “You’re right, that’s the head. I want you to stay calm and breath through the contractions as you push.”

Lucifer whimpered as he reached out for her. She helped him wrap his arms around her body so that he was leaning half out of the bathtub and pushing down into the water. He clung to her as hard as he could each time he got a contraction and pushed as hard as he could, eager for the pain to be over. He opened his eyes just long enough during one of his breaks to see that Michael was standing there. 

He had loved the other angel dearly despite them agreeing that wasn’t something they could do in their relationship. He felt his heart shatter in his heart as he watched the Sword of God turn around and high-tail it out of his little house. He could hear the wind whistling through the open door at the front of his home, Michael hadn’t even bothered to close it in his desperation to run away from the problem that he had helped create.

Belphegor brushed Lucifer’s hair off of his forehead as she felt down in the water again. “Good, you’re doing so well. I can already feel the whole head and the cord is nowhere in sight. I want you to let go of my now and reach down. Cup the head with your hands so that when the rest of the body comes out you can lift him onto your chest,” she instructed. Her voice was so calm and level that it eased the panic that had been sitting heavy in Lucifer’s chest ever since he had gotten pregnant in the first place.

He did as he was asked, unweaving his arms from around her neck and sitting back against the tub as he reached down for the babe. It felt magical, to touch his baby with his hands for the first time even if they were still connected to his body through the process of their birth. Another contraction interrupted his thoughts before he had even finished having them and he bore down again.

It took a single push for the shoulders and the rest of the babe’s body to be born, bringing Asmodeus into the world. Lucifer let out a gasp of surprise at the rate with which his baby was born, but was able to bring him up and out of the water just as he took his first breath and began to cry. The angel brought his son closer to his body as he collapsed down onto the water.

Someone had apparently been walking by the door when Asmodeus was born because Mammon appeared in the doorway to the bathroom. “Shit, man. You should have told us that you were planning on popping out a little sproggy today. We would have moved the meeting,” he joked.

“Are you here to help or to cause problems?” Belphegor asked, raising an eyebrow at him.

“I guess I can help,” the other Seraphim shrugged.

Lucifer stopped paying attention to either of them after that. The only thing that he could focus on was the tiny life that he had spent the last nine months creating. As an angel, and one of them on the Counsel of God no less, he knew what it was like to create something that was living. Growing a being inside of him and then enduring hours of pain to bring them into the world was an entirely different feeling. He knew that he would endure every moment of anxiety and panic afterwards if it meant that he got to hold his baby son in his arms again.

---

The next three hours were a whirl in his mind. He delivered the afterbirth, a mess of blood vessels and flesh that had helped keep Asmodues alive in the womb, and was then checked by Belphegor. When she determined that he needed rest but no stitches or medication. He was toweled off and then moved into his bed. He felt sticky around his neck and hair and he knew he was bleeding out of his cunt, but it didn’t matter. Asmodeus had been cleaned and checked over by the other angel as well, so they were settled into bed together.

The babe was sleeping against a pillow on Lucifer’s bed as the angel dozed beside him. Despite the effort it had taken to get him there, the Morningstar couldn’t find the restfulness inside of him that was required to sleep. He wanted to stay as awake as he could and simply gaze down at his tiny baby boy. He hummed gently to him so that the baby could sleep more, though he noticed that Mammon also adjusted in his sleep. Belphegor had left after she determined that everything was fine so she could sleep in her own bed, but Mammon had agreed to stay so that if anything happened he could get her.

The door to Lucifer’s home opened and another unexpected visitor entered. Dark hair and eyes immediately clued the Seraphim into the fact that it was Michael. Anger brewed in him for a moment as he wanted to demand where the other angel got off on abandoning him during the terror of birth only to come in when everything had settled. He had already missed their son’s first meal, first dressing, and first breath. In Lucifer’s mind, that meant that the other angel shouldn’t get to see anything else either.

He had been laying on the bed when the door was opened, so he remained there to see what would happen. He may have been sore from the birth, but he already knew that he could overpower Michael if the other angel tried to do anything to his baby.

Michael crossed over the floor, giving Mammon a wide berth, before he picked up the baby. He cradled the little one in his arms like he had been the one preparing for nine months instead of Lucifer. He brushed his fingers over the side of Asmodeus’ face and said, “I swear that you will live a happy life full of people that love you. I apologize that I cannot be one of these people for you.”

He couldn’t stand the idea of his baby being in the arms of another any longer, so he sat up on the bed. Lucifer had apparently startled the other angel because Michael jerked back, waking Asmodeus in the process. Lucifer held his arms out for his son and then immediately soothed him like it was second nature, rocking him gently back and forth. He then turned to his ex-lover and asked, “What are you doing with him?”

“I came to say goodbye to him,” Michael said.

“Goodbye? You’ve hardly even said hello,” he scoffed.

“Lucifer. You knew in the beginning of our dalliance that I would never be anything more than a means to an end. I don’t know why you’re acting shocked now,” he shook his head as if the other angel was foolish.

Lucifer could feel tears welling in his eyes, though it was nothing compared to the anger that was already burning away in his veins. How dare an angel that had abandoned him during the worst time of his life come into his own home and try to humiliate him? “I’m upset because it’s not just me now. I knew that you didn’t love me and that you refused to let yourself admit that you enjoyed my company outside of what I could do for your cock. I’m upset because Asmodeus deserves better.”

“Perhaps he does, but that is entirely the fault of his father,” Michael replied as he turned and walked out. He closed the door this time, which made it feel all the more final.

Lucifer wrapped his arms around his baby a bit tighter, just to remind himself that Asmodeus was there and perfectly safe as he laid them down on the bed. He would love his son enough for two parents, cherish him enough for all of Heaven, and adore him enough to rival the way God looked upon humans.

[magnoliacharmed]

Hard Working Man

18+, Shawn Michaels x Kevin Nash one shot

[Also available on Archive of Our Own!]

Tags: Stripper AU, referenced drug use, alcohol use, masturbation, condomless sex, daddy kink

Word count: 4081

Summary:

Shawn finally gets to hook up with Diesel, the security guard at his strip club.

There wasn't a mirrored surface in existence that Shawn wouldn't glance into. He was surrounded by them in his messy dressing room with the fucked up yellow lighting, he fixed his hair in the giant heart-shaped one on the stage before he started his show, he made kissy-faces at himself in the cracked one he snorted his coke off of. Shawn's eyes were always glossy and wet. Red as the spandex of his pants. His nostrils burned when the asprin-y post nasal drip trickled down his sore throat.

Shawn had spent a lot of the night yelling. It added a sort of mysterious raspiness to his voice that the strip club patrons were very fond of when he went to their booths to offer a private dance. He had the best record in the club-- never turned down, not even once. Whenever his friends hit the stage in their tiny shorts or cowboy hats, Shawn sat in the audience and cheered for them. Reaching into his jeans pocket for crumpled up cash (not the hundred dollar bill though, he needed that for later), he walked up to them and stuck the bills between their tight, shiny g-strings. What a good friend. He knew they'd do the same for him after they’d a few drinks and lines. 

Of course Shawn was the main event. He was who everyone in this place even came for. Not to shit on the other boys, they did a great job too. But he and they knew who was really the big dog. They might have had bigger muscles and a fuller head of hair, sure. They didn't have the charisma , though. Shawn was all sweet smiles reflecting into that big heart under the pink lighting. A well toned body covered in oil made his few tattoos shine like bright stars. The crowd went crazy when he swung his pretty blond hair around, fluffing it and shaking it with reckless abandon. Hands reached up to paw at his hips when he rolled them. Women sighed when their lucky friend was chosen to bethe special lady Shawn grabbed the back of the head of to grind his crotch into her face. His sky blue eyes blunk heavily down at the girls looking up at him like some kind of king. Cash flittered off their fingers and into the air around him, a storm of dirty dollars clouding the smoke-filled skies of the club.

Diesel was having a hard time staying still at the display. Thank God no one was paying him any attention. His cock was at half mast under his faded black jeans watching Shawn writhe under the hot lights. An innocent little smile, the kind that said Oops, didn't mean to do that! , played perfectly across Shawn's face. Hooking his thumbs into the waist of his tights (his costume of choice was the one of a pro wrestler, which Diesel thought was a silly gimmick for a stripper), he shimmied them down just above his dick. The thick happy trail of hair leading down his stomach was blond too… Diesel's eye twitched at the sight of it. He could've sworn Shawn winked at him as he pulled the stretchy fabric down past his ass to show off the tattoo on his cheek.

The big man had only been working as security for the club for a few months and that was off and on. He had yet to work a shift with Shawn, always getting taken off the schedule or moved around at the last minute. Mean jokes were made at Shawn's expense whenever Diesel had some downtime with the other guards. Their favorite thing to call him was a sissy, but they didn't hold back from some other choice words either. Diesel never understood their vitriol. Night after night of women throwing their body and soul at your very existence? Those same women spending their whole paycheck just so you could press your dick against their inviting lips? Sounded like a dream job to him. The only reason he never got into it was his general clumsiness. He had the look for it but no rhythm or dancing skills. Some of the women he checked the IDs of had begun to call him Big Sexy. The drunker ones ran their hands over his big arms and asked when he'd take the stage. Diesel shooed them away with a smile, convincing them to go throw their money at someone who deserved it.

"Shawn's not a sissy 'cause he strips, man," One of the other guys rolled his eyes at Diesel's obvious lack of interest. "You see anyone calling Hunter a sissy? Or Ken?"

Diesel shrugged. Honestly he wasn't trying to involve himself in the gossip. This was just an easy job for him to make some extra money from. He didn't come here with the goal of making friends. The biggest perks were his two shift drinks and the occasional pussy that got thrown at him. If he got a drinking buddy out of it too it was a win for him. He hoped it wouldn't be one of these security jackasses though.

"He's a sissy 'cause he doesn't give a fuck about the ladies. All that twisting and grinding is for the guys. You've seen some of them out in the audience right? Ray on the other shift says that sometimes he'll see him set up private dances on his off time." The guard shivered at the revelation that other men would be present at a male strip club.

"What, so Shawn's gay?"

Another guard piped in. “He says he's bi. Do you believe that?"

Diesel spent the rest of the night chewing on it. Shawn liked men too, huh. Diesel himself had ventured with the same sex a few times. The experiences were pretty good. Good enough to try it again. Especially with someone as pretty as Shawn. This job was paying too well for him to shit where he ate by fucking him, though. The blond was a wreck of a person from what he heard from the bartenders. Because he was the top earner, the owner of the club let him do whatever he wanted. Shawn took advantage of his status by showing up smashed beyond all belief. Somehow he managed to pull it together by the time he had to perform. The more Diesel thought about it, he realized that the sex would probably be mind-blowing between him and Shawn. He was prone to having soft spots for those who were a little damaged. 

The pendulum between a secure job and a good orgasm swung around in Diesel's mind for the next couple of hours. It had been so long since he'd earned a steady paycheck. Knowing he could pay his landlord on time took a ton of weight off his shoulders. But Shawn… the pendulum was all out of whack. He had to get over this. 

When Billy Gunn approached him in a not-so-subtle way to spend some time together in the bathroom stall, he strongly considered taking him up on the offer. Billy was pretty in his own elusively open way. Diesel had to admit that the glittering gem in his belly piercing was enticing, along with his easygoing smile and tall frame. He opened his mouth to tell Billy to give him a five minute lead when Shawn bounded up to them with a skip in his step, waves of his hair floating around his face like strands of old gold. He had changed into his street clothes, a pair of tight jeans and a well fitting white t shirt. Billy immediately knew he'd fallen out of favor. He'd catch Diesel next time.

"Hi, big man." That thousand watt, pilled out smile spread wide on Shawn's face. Diesel heard the hint of an accent in his voice… maybe Texan? He took in the sight of him in all of his fidgety golden retriever glory. Even in the dim back area of the club Shawn was still shining bright.

"Billy, I think McMahon is looking for you." 

Shawn blinked rapidly with big doe eyes at Billy like he was only stopping by to relay the news. A note of finality in his voice told a different story. Tonight wasn’t the night to start a fight over it all, so Billy instead rolled his eyes and left to get his shift drink. Keeping Shawn happy was for the best of everyone in the club. He and Billy had their little arguments, never anything serious. Even though Shawn was the troublemaker most of the time, somehow it always ended up with him pouting and tearing up at Billy for being oh-so-mean to him. It only took a Shawn grabbing his dick and whining I promise I won’t be a jerk again, baby in that drawl of his for Billy to forgive him. 

The dynamics between Shawn and Billy caused Diesel to spare a few extra glances at Billy while he left. Another lewd image wormed its way through Diesel’s mind-- Billy and Shawn on their knees taking turns sucking him off. 

Shawn shook Diesel out of his fantasy when he noisily released suction from the cherry lollipop he'd been sucking on and dropped it into his glass of vodka. Swirls of red food coloring hung suspended in the alcohol like blood in the ocean. Diesel wondered if he was supposed to be the shark as he stared at Shawn’s crimson tinted lips.

"Good job out there, Shawn. The ladies loved it." 

"They always do." Shawn took a sip from his demonic looking concoction. "Want some? I promise I don't have the cooties."

Diesel couldn't help but to laugh. Shawn was being extra cute towards him. It only made him harder and more confused at what he should do. Still leaning towards fucking his brains out, Diesel took the glass and swallowed a bigger gulp than he wanted to. He tried not to react to the burning liquid as he handed the glass back to Shawn, but he still elicited a giggle out of him by tearing up.

"A big guy like you can't handle his liquor?" Shawn was on the verge of sounding maniacal. Despite this clear and obvious warning sign to stay away from him, Diesel kept his eyes locked onto his lips while he drank down the rest of the liquid. 

"I can handle it. But what I wonder is if you can handle me?" 

Diesel reached down to readjust his now painfully stiff cock in his pants. It was supposed to look casual, like it was just so big he had to do that sometimes. Shawn was smart enough to catch the hint, thankfully. He tilted his head to one side, eyes widening at how much of a handful Diesel took of himself. Caution wasn't thrown into the wind, it was launched like a fucking rocket. 

"Wow… " Shawn moved in closer to Diesel. Heat radiated off the two men and made the already sweltering air of the club even warmer. Scents of body oil, sweat, and cologne all mixed together into something that Diesel wished he could bottle up and carry around with him as a pick-me-up. "Does that mean what I think it does?" 

"What do you think it means, Shawn?" 

Diesel's voice was very low. This “so stupid it was adorable” act Shawn put on got him going way more than he liked to admit. Especially because he could tell it wasn't who he really was. It was just a sweet little persona he liked to throw on for the customers. And Diesel was in the mood to be a customer tonight.

"It means, hmm…" Shawn tapped his finger against the scruff on his chin. He didn’t particularly like the way it felt, but it got him extra cash from the women whenever he grew it out. "It means you want to fuck me."

God, yes.

It only took a couple of minutes for Shawn to slam back another double shot of vodka then pull Diesel's large figure back to his dressing room. After who knows how many drinks, snorts, puffs of weed and popped pills, Shawn was still managing to stand steadily. The only telltale sign that he wasn’t sober was his words beginning to run into each other. He dragged his hands all over the expanse of Diesel's pecs. His mouth was moving a mile a minute about… something. It was hard for Diesel’s brain to keep up with the way Shawn's touch was lighting him on fire.

"I knew you wanted me! I saw the way you looked at me when I was on stage, I did that just for you daddy, I'm all yours tonight, you gonna give me something I can feel?"

Diesel planted a rough kiss on Shawn's waiting lips. He needed him to be quiet for just a second so he could compose himself. The energy coming from him was overwhelming in the best possible way. Along with being a good dancer, Shawn was also an excellent kisser. He pressed his body into Diesel, his own erection rubbing against the bigger man's. A small gasp caught in his throat at the sensation. Shawn wrapped his arms behind Diesel's neck and melted at being pressed so tightly. He nuzzled into his neck to leave a kiss on his sensitive skin, then reached up to smack one on the curvature of his jawline. It made Diesel’s brain flip up and down and his cock throb.

Shawn released himself from the kiss slowly, as if he was memorizing every little thing around him to store away for later. He looked like he'd been fucked already. The reddening of his cheeks would be cute in any other moment, but now it looked very inappropriate. Doubly so when Diesel wrapped his large hand gently around Shawn's neck. Scratchy stubble prickled against his calloused palm. As soon as Diesel's hand rested on his delicate flesh, the delirious smile returned right to Shawn's face. Harder, harder, harder.  

"You gonna get rough with me, daddy?"

“Maybe. You’ll just have to wait and see. Why don’t you give me a show first?”

Shawn eagerly pushed Diesel to sit on the cracked leather of the dressing's room couch. Total excitement consumed his being as he lowered himself down into his lap. It'd been a long time since he'd been fucked, really fucked. Diesel was the type of guy who could give that to him the way he liked it. With a less than graceful movement, Shawn unzipped his jeans. To Diesel's surprise, he was going commando. Immediately he wondered why he was so shocked. He’d just got off the stage after being a huge fucking flirt. Of course he'd want as much access to his dick as possible. It sprang from the form-fitting denim to bob in the air obscenely. Diesel was relatively content to let Shawn stroke himself in front of him until he came. Shawn’s lips parted into a perfect O-shape, his eyes dreamily blinking while he twisted and pulled at his cock. 

“I need you, Kevin.” Shawn breathed into the stuffy air of the room.  

“How do you know my real name?” Diesel didn’t really care that he knew. Really he wanted to hear Shawn moan it again and again, all night long. He wanted to hear him yell it, or have him crying and begging it all muffled into the couch. 

“I have my ways. Some of your boys are real big fans of mine, despite what they may say.” Shawn continued stroking but slowed down to really give Diesel a show. He made sure to store the memory away of Diesel’s destroyed, screwed up expression. 

“They’ll be jealous of me, then. Raise up just a little.”

Diesel’s hand came to rest on Shawn’s ass to gently lift him up. It was hard for him to even focus on pulling down the zipper of his jeans with the way Shawn looked above him. He was just so… pretty . Diesel had never seen a man like him before. 

The hitch in Shawn’s breathing when Diesel pulled his cock out was a real ego boost. He abruptly stopped stroking to stare down at how heavy it was. 

“It’s so big.”

Shawn fidgeted around to fully pull off his jeans and throw them on the floor. Now Diesel could finally rest his hands on the taut muscles of his ass. Shawn giggled when Diesel’s cock twitched as he grinded his body forward. 

“You’re driving me crazy, Shawn.”

“Not yet I’m not. You’ll see just how crazy I can drive you.”

Shawn leaned forward to wrap his arms around Diesel’s neck. Their cocks rubbed against each other with one long stroke from the movement, causing Diesel to grab onto Shawn tighter. Shawn’s hair fell around both of their faces like a curtain. Thin streams of the awful yellow light from the ceiling peeked through to cast shadows across Diesel’s face. 

“Can I get another kiss, daddy?” Shawn whispered down into his ear.

Diesel was embarrassed at how easy he was. Those few words alone were enough to make him leak out onto his shirt. He was pretty sure that stain wasn’t coming out in the wash. His hand freed itself from Shawn’s ass to rest against his head and push him in for a kiss. This time it was feverish with Shawn reaching into Diesel’s thick brown hair to steady himself. His mouth still tasted like the dregs of his vodka and cherry candy cocktail. Diesel was distracted enough to not react in time to Shawn reaching back to press the head of his cock against his hole. His whining from above made Diesel want to push it all inside of him at once just to see if he could take it. He wanted to— no, he had to see Shawn speechless.

“Do you have any lube?” Diesel choked out. 

Shawn twisted his body around to reach for the partially filled bottle of lube on the couch’s side table. He quickly squeezed some of the cool liquid onto his index and middle finger, then pushed his two fingers inside him. His eyes fluttered beautifully at the feeling, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing would be enough in comparison to being filled up by Diesel. Just as Diesel was beginning to feel like he would come before he even got inside of him, Shawn removed his fingers and lined up against the head of his cock once more. 

“God, I’ve been waiting for this,” Shawn murmured as he lowered himself down onto Diesel. His eyes shut and his mouth fell open as he was stretched out by the thickness of his cock. When his eyes opened back up, Diesel knew he got exactly what he needed. Shawn was at a loss for words and already looking fucked out. He was sure he was looking pretty fucked out too; the show Shawn had put on had almost put him over the edge a couple of times already. Now here he was bouncing on top of him, palms pressed against Diesel’s knees so he could lean back for better control. His cock bobbed around and hit his stomach with every roll of his hips against Diesel while his hair flew around him from the increasing movement. 

The springs of the couch squeaked uncomfortably below Diesel and Shawn. Along with the sounds of skin slapping against skin, the only noises in the room came from Shawn. He couldn’t help but moan loudly, as if he was purposely trying to let everyone know what was going on in the room. Diesel hoped to be a little more discreet… but fuck it. Shawn was worth his business being exposed. Sweat poured down the both of them as Diesel continued to rut hard into him. 

“Fuck— fuck— fuck!” Shawn’s voice raised an octave every time Diesel pushed against his prostate. He moved inside of him fast and hot and Shawn felt like he was being absolutely split open. It was exactly what he needed after a long night of working. He was beginning to come down from the coke and was in need of another Soma. Diesel’s cock pushed those feelings away for the time being, the most beautiful and perfect distraction one could ask for. 

Shawn’s hand rushed to return to stroking himself. Diesel couldn’t take the view of him twisting his hand around his length, thumb pressing against the slit of himself while he pushed himself up and down above him. It was like being presented with a buffet full of desserts… too many sweet options to choose from. Tears squeezed out of Shawn’s eyes and rolled down his blushed cheeks as his hips began to stutter. He was even more gorgeous when he cried, a realization that made Diesel’s stomach feel funny. It was as if Shawn really was an angel with the way the light haloed around his hair and reflected in his eyes.

“Stop— stop crying, fuck.” 

“I can’t help it, daddy. You feel so good,” Shawn’s words were slurred and his smile was lopsided. The room was beginning to spin from the vodka and his rapidly approaching orgasm. He used the last of his strength to slow down and grind deeply into Diesel, matching the pace of his hand pulling against himself. Putting on a show was half the fun of sex, anyways. Sometimes he got more pleasure out of turning people on than he did from fucking. Luckily for him, he got to do both with Diesel. 

Diesel threw his head back to squeeze his eyes shut. He couldn’t take it anymore. It only took one last drawn out whimper from Shawn to make him shoot off inside of him. Shawn gasped at the feeling of his come painting his insides and began to ride with a fervor again. Just as the last of Diesel’s come flooded him, Shawn came. Pearly white ropes painted his lower stomach and abs while he continued to chase after Diesel’s orgasm. His muscles ached like crazy from all the riding. Diesel slowly dragged him off his worn out body and watched as the come leaked from his tight hole and back down onto his own dick. It truly was a sight to behold, a sight Diesel would never ever forget. 

“Goddamn, Kevin. Goddamn.”

Shawn took deep, rasping breaths as he ragdolled onto the couch. Diesel opened his eyes to look over at him splayed out. Goddamn was right. What was he so worried about? Fucking Shawn wouldn’t cause any disruptions for him at the club. It’d only make the job more exciting. So he was kind of crazy. Maybe a little manipulative. Definitely an egomaniac. But he was fun and he knew how fuck. Diesel could work around the rest. 

“Will you take me home tonight? I don’t wanna be all alone out there in the dark.” Shawn crawled up back into Diesel’s lap. He caressed his chest and poked his bottom lip out cutely.  

“You really know how to put on a show don’t you?”

Shawn’s hearty laugh was comforting to Diesel’s ear. The spell was broken. 

“This is why I like you, man! You know when I’m just playing around.” He pulled his hair back into a loose ponytail and grabbed up his jeans off the floor. It was almost time for Diesel to clock out. He didn’t want to hear shit from the boys and definitely not from McMahon about where he’d been for the last half hour, so he had to find a way to get out as quietly as possible. 

“Seriously though. Come home with me after your next shift.” 

Shawn winked as he smoothed out his shirt. It was definitely a demand and not a request. It was his world, so he always got what he wanted. Diesel’s legs were still liquified beneath him. Shawn was the one who’d done all the work and still managed to get back on the move faster than him. 

“You think Billy’s still around? Gotta go apologize to him.” Shawn rolled his eyes and stopped out of the room before Diesel could even start to answer. For a man who was on the verge of screaming just minutes ago, Shawn’s voice seemed even deeper than it was earlier. It must have been for Billy’s sake as another layer of their weird relationship. 

Diesel sighed. Maybe Shawn would be a problem after all.

[noloveforned]

no love for ned is all set for our usual 8pm to midnight slot tonight on wlur. listen live or catch up whenever by streaming last week's show on mixcloud!

no love for ned on wlur – september 1st, 2023 from 8-10pm

artist // track // album // label personal and the pizzas // pepperoni eyes // raw pie // slovenly dick stusso // part-time apocalypse // s.p. // hardly art the real distractions // beach men // stupid 7" ep // perennial / k tha retail simps // easy street // live on cool street // total punk blithe // no comfort holden // head is mighty // alias velocity girl // malibu // setting the night on fire with rock and roll ep // (self-released) green/blue // all eyes awake // woman life freedom- music for iran, volume two compilation // free them now the five year plan // useless // 1985 // old bad habits who is she? // thursday // goddess energy // father/daughter sissy fuzz // don't fear (the reverb) // footnotes // jigsaw rikki rakki // bad news // breaking skin // (self-released) the go-betweens // boundary rider // oceans apart // yep roc terry de castro // separate light // you can't separate light 10" // scopitones al green // perfect day // perfect day digital single // fat possum pearla // about hunger, about love // oh glistening onion, the nighttime is coming // spacebomb sorry about dresden // relax, it's tuesday // let it rest // saddle creek ned oldham and jordan perry // pink arrow // three new songs ep // (self-released) arthur russell // not checking up // picture of bunny rabbit // audika säje featuring ambrose akinmusire // never you mind // säje // (self-released) alabaster deplume featuring momoko gill and mettashiba // did you know // come with fierce grace // international anthem angel bat dawid // nuclear war! (oui ennui cosmic off-ramp remix) // red hot and ra- the remixes compilation // red hot organization saba and no id // back in office // back in office digital single // (self-released) black moon // how many mc's... // enta da stage // wreck raw poetic and damu the fudgemunk // ease side // away back in // def pressé nimsins and ovrkast. // something soon // me vs. me // lofiction salami rose joe louis featuring soccer96 // akousmatikous // akousmatikous // brainfeeder tom tom club // genius of love // stop making sense (deluxe edition) // warner market featuring tanaya harper // everytime // market cassette // healthy tapes grade school // are you my girl? // how to make wooden planes // kingfisher bluez pretty in pink // radishes // pillows // subjangle / hidden bay lachlan denton // you // furnishings // bobo integral helpful people // wrong way rainbow // brokenblossom threats // tall texan

[harrysblues]

Eye Patch

The one in which Harry's kids get scared when their father gets hurt on stage.

.....................................................................................………

When Harry and Y/N's twins started to grow into toddlers, the couple quickly noticed that their youngest struggled to control her eye. That's why they didn't waste any time, and sooner rather than later, three-year-old Lena was wearing an eye patch to try to fix her strabismus.

The process of getting her used to wearing it was long and exhausting for Harry and Y/N, and they tried very hard to make it fun, buying eye patches with different shapes and designs. Their other twin, Harvey, was the most supportive of his sister, and he offered to wear matching eye patches with her whenever she was self-conscious about wearing it in public.

Harry and Y/N's twins might be toddlers, but they love and understand each other like no one else, and that fascinates their parents. Besides, the couple has tried so hard to make them understand that they are loved and supported no matter what, and it is very important to express their feelings with each other.

"Daddy do we have good seats for your concert tomorrow?" Harvey asks suddenly during their daily family dinner.

"Of course, my boy. The best in the house, always!" Harry answers, furrowing his brows. "Why do you ask, baby? You know you always get the best".

"I know, daddy!" His son answers playfully. "But it's the first time sissy is going to the concert with her eye patch, and I want her to have the best time".

Harry and Y/N can swear that their hearts melted when those words left their son's mouth.

"Oh," says Lena. "Daddy, I'm going to see you singing, right? You are going to be so far away, I need to see you".

Lena has always been a very anxious baby, and the family had, and still is, dealing with some heavy separation anxiety from her. The eye issue only added to this, and it has been hard for the couple to manage.

"Don't get nervous, my best girl" Harry tried to comfort her. "You three will have the best seats in the venue, and the important thing is to have fun! You see me every day, and I'm available always".

This seems to cheer her up, and the family moves on from this topic to talk about school. Sudden changes in conversation subjects are very common in the house, and Harry and Y/N can't lie and say they don't love it when their kids bring up things they want to tell their parents. Seeing them interact is one of their favorite things ever since they started to talk.

Dinner finished, and the kids were put to bed with a story read by Y/N and their song, Love of my life, sung by their father. It was not an easy thing to do like it usually is because they were too excited about their concert the next day. Even though Harry has toured for a while after they were born, this is the first time his twins are in the audience, watching him perform. Before this second leg of Love On Tour, they stayed backstage with Y/N and whoever would watch over them while Harry was putting on a show.

However, not long ago the twins started to feel more curious and understand more about their parent's, especially Harry's, lifestyle. That is the reason why they have let them watch the concerts whenever they show any interest about it.

The next day came by very quickly, and now the kids are getting ready with Y/N while Harry is rehearsing and putting together the outfit for tonight.

Lena has decided to wear a silver sparkly skirt that matches her cowboy hat paired with a t-shirt with a red heart in the middle, and Harvey is wearing bell jeans paired with a matching t-shirt with her sister and a royal blue boa. Y/N has let them choose their outfits, wanting them to have the most freedom possible, and she has to say she is quite proud of what they have come up with.

Unfortunately, the family didn't have enough time to wish Harry good luck like they usually would have, seeing that there had been an outfit malfunction, according to Harry Lambert, and the whole band was running late. This upset the kids for two minutes, and then Y/N suggested a face time call with Harry.

"Hi, my babies. I'm so sorry I can't see you before the show" He says with a pout on his face. "I promise I'll blow you a kiss from the stage, and give you lots of cuddles when I finish" Y/N can see the sadness on his face, knowing that he is upset he is not going to be able to get his good luck kiss and cuddle from his two favorite people.

"Don't worry daddy", says Lena. "Harvs and I just wanted to show you our outfits that mummy let us choose by ourselves!".

"Oh, isn't that right baby girl? Can you do a little twirl for daddy?" he says getting his face as close to the screen as possible, squinting his eyes to try to see his precious daughter in the most detail possible. "Daddy really wants to see your outfits".

The family spent the next thirty minutes following Harry around, from the make up chair to his changing room and everything, through his phone, until the moment it was time for him to change into his chosen outfit and get in the box.

"Okay babies, I need to go get ready", he tells them sounding way too devastated for him to be seeing them in less than fifteen minutes. "I'll see you on stage okay? Try to raise your hands the highest, sing the loudest, and have the most fun for me".

The kids promised to do all of that before blowing him multiple kisses and hanging up. They needed to get to their seats right now if they wanted to avoid getting swarmed by some fans. They are usually very polite and nice to Y/N, and especially the kids, but Y/N doesn't want to risk it without Harry there to help her.

They got there safely, and the twins, who are seated on each side of you, are happy to see that their father was right and that they have extremely good seats. They will be able to see their father without a problem.

"Mummy it's starting!" Harvey shrieks when the lights go out and the intro visuals start playing. "Oh my god mummy, I'm so excited!" Y/N never gets tired of how excited he gets every time he sees his dad in concert, it is always as if it was the first time.

Lena clings to your arm from the other side of you, her excitement for the concert to start being silent compared to her brother's. Y/N starts shouting and jumping with excitement as well, making her children copy her and start singing the songs. They also notice that Harry's outfit matches his children's, so that makes them shout even louder.

Harry doesn't take long to find them and when he sends a kiss to his family, the "Muah" that goes with his kiss is heard in the whole arena, making everyone aww.

"Mummy daddy can see us!" Both of the twins exclaim, shocked their father can see them from the stage. "If I send him a kiss will he see me?" Lena asks, genuinely curious.

You don't know how to answer because Harry is constantly moving on stage, so it would be very easy for him to miss his daughter trying to blow him a kiss. Nonetheless, Lena doesn't wait for her mothers approval and blows a kiss towards the stage.

Unbeknownst to Y/N, Harry had been watching the whole interaction, and he didn't hesitate to take her daughter's kiss in the air and put it in his back pocket, making Lena squeal.

The concert goes as expected, and Y/N and the twins are having so much fun. Besides, Y/N is quick to notice that, distracted from the excitement, Lena hasn't once complained about the eye patch she has been in fact wearing in public. That is a huge achievement.

Y/N had planned to leave the seats and go backstage right before kiwi so they wouldn't have trouble getting there later. Nevertheless, a gasp distracts her from dancing carefree to one of the last songs of the concert.

"Mummy something happened to daddy", Lena says with concern in her voice. "Mummy someone threw something at daddy" She repeated, starting to tear up.

This makes Harvey notice how his father is rubbing his eye, and keeping it closed for way too long, making him worry and start clinging to his mum as well.

Both kids start full-on sobbing when they see their father unable to open his eye on stage, constantly rubbing it and trying to block the light from his eyes. Y/N hadn't seen the object, and she definitely doesn't want to ask her kids, so she is unable to assess the gravity of the situation. The only thing she is able to do is to take both of her kids in her arms and carry them backstage.

Once they get there she sits the kids on the sofa and dries their tears, trying to comfort them. "My babies don't cry"; she coos. "Daddy is the strongest person in the world, I'm sure he is fine. It just took him by surprise!"

This last sentence seems to calm the three-year-old twins, and they end up cuddling their mother, soft whines coming from them from time to time, sleepy eyes from all the tears getting hard for them to open.

The kids jump when they hear the door open, and when Harry goes straight to the bathroom instead of greeting them, they immediately start sobbing again. Harry hears them from the inside, and he is quick to open the door once he has checked his eye, and get to his babies as soon as possible.

"Oh my, sweet things", he says, quickly kneeling next to them and being almost pushed to the floor by the force his kids hugged him with. "What's happened? Did you not enjoy the show? Was it too loud?"

The kids don't respond, and Harry keeps rubbing their backs and kissing their tears away, unaware and completely clueless about what has made his sweethearts so upset.

"Daddy, someone hurt your eye!" Harvey exclaims with anger. "You are hurt, daddy". Harry's heart breaks with how upset he is.

"There is nothing to worry about, sunshine", he explains. "Daddy got hurt for a moment, but now I just need an ice eye patch to make the sting go away. I'll be perfect again in an hour".

"Eye patch?", his daughter perks up at the comment. "We match again?"

"Yeah baby, I'm going to match with the prettiest princess in the world", he tells her soflty.

"But mummy is the prettiest princess in the world", she fights back playfully.

"No no no, mummy is a queen", he clarifies turning to his wife. "Your mummy is the prettiest and most gorgeous queen in the entire planet".

"I agree", both of their kids say at the same time. "And then Harvey is the prettiest prince, and you are the prettiest king", finishes Lena, making Harry give her the biggest kiss on the cheek.

"That is right", Y/N answers while sitting down close to her family. "We are all beautiful and special in our own ways, isn't that right?".

"This deserves a big family hug for daddy to heal his eye, don't you think?", Harvey suggests, making Harry smile and hug his kids even closer. Y/N gets in the hug, giving Harry a passionate kiss and a knowing smile, she is sure that they are both thinking the same thing.

Their family is perfect, and they are the happiest they have ever been.

................................................................................................

I really hope you like this one guys! The response I have gotten with my first post has been insane, and now I feel very inspired to post my work. You can send requests for me to write, and don't forget to like and reblog! THANK YOU SO MUCH &lt;3

[babybadger]

I need more dad!daniel please x

Your wish is my command love🥰

A New Baby in Town

“Daddy?….Daddy?” Daniel woke up to soft tapping on his cheek. His princess sitting up on his chest. “Daddy wake.” She began to sniffle and gasp on air. The key sign his two year old was about to burst out crying. “What’s up darling?” he asks right before he yawns and pulls her down into his arms, not even opening his eyes. He was used to Layla crawling into the bed midway through the morning and her demanding cuddles. “Mumma sick. I not like mumma sick.” she whines into his chest. “mhmm” he agrees before realising what his daughter was telling him as he heard you in the bathroom. “Wait what? Baby stay here I’m gonna help mum.” He tells her, passing her a dummy from his side of the table and pushing back her curls as she crawls into the warmth of the spot he was just lying in.

As he walks in he sees a test on the side of the counter and you slumped by the toilet. “I certainly didn’t miss this stage” You tell him. “AHAH we are having another baby!” he shouted before you shushed him. “Babe yes sorry it wasn’t a grand reveal but I feel like shit. Can we not tell Layla yet. She is already so jealous with Isaac, I dread her sharing you with another child in the house.” He nods but still sits beside her on the bathroom floor and pulls her in for a cuddle. “We are having another baby! God I love you,” he says smiling into your neck.

9 months later…

Introducing your daughter to your newest little girl was going to be hard no matter when you did it. She cried on and off for a week when you told her there was a baby coming to the house. Seeking comfort in only Daniel and refusing to speak to you about it. Thankfully, Daniels parents took her for the first couple days so you could get settled and get comfortable feeding a newborn again. But today she was coming home and you still didn’t feel ready. You loved her so so much and were glad she was coming home but her reaction to the newborn was keeping you awake more than the newborn themselves.

“Y/N honey, we are home” You hear Grace come in the front door and strapped your nursing bra back up. Your little girl quietly slid into the living room and stood by the couch. Daniel and Grace coming in behind her, Dan carrying her overnight bags. “Come say hi darling.” You said holding the baby on a pillow on your lap and one hand out to her so she could come sit beside you. She took one look at you and the baby and hid in Daniels leg. “C’mon let’s meet the baby together shall we?” He said bringing her over to sit on his lap beside you. Grace snapped as many pictures as she could from the sofa across from you. Watching her grandchildren meet brought tears to her eyes. Moments like these were precious.

Everyday was a learning curve with two under two. Jealousy was a BIG issue from the first night. Grace was kind enough to cook your whole family dinner before she left. Even sitting down to feed your youngest your oldest girl was still acting very shy. You could hear her talking to Daniel in the kitchen. She’d stuck by his hip since she got back.

“No no baby mummy and baby don’t need space at the table, they can eat on the couch.” He tells his curly haired double. “Why?” She asks through her dummy. Something she had barely let go of since she got home from her grannies. Both you and Daniel thought it might of been a cry for attention but it wasn’t causing her any problems so you left her to use it whenever she wanted. “Cause mummy and sissy need to be comfy so sissy can eat too.” Immediately the toddler burst into tears. Daniel turned from dishing out the dinner to pick up Layla. “What’s wrong beautiful heyyy hey hey calm down” he attempts to soothe her as she spits out her dummy onto the floor and begins nearly screaming into his shoulder.” If Daniel knew anything, it’s that if Layla was crying, you would be crying too. Those damn hormones.

Taking your oldest upstairs, Daniel picked up another dummy on his way and sent you a soft smile as he walked passed the living room door. Just as he expected tears were running down your face. Gently your stroked your youngest’s face. “I swear she likes you bub, she just loves her mummy and daddies attention,” you whisper down at Lily. She pays you no attention back. Her mouth sucking away as her tiny hands grab at your chest and rolled up t-shirt. Wiping your tears, you try and relax into the sofa. You know the stress is no good for the feeding but you just want both your girls to be happy.

“Alright little one tell me what’s going on? hmmm why you so upset with Daddy?” Daniel asks the distraught toddler. Her little legs dangle off the bed as he sits on his knees in front of her. Layla gasps as she tries to cry and talk at the same time. “Just…want my mummy back….daddy wants new baby…I’m not baby.” Sobs racked the entire little girls body and Daniel passed her the dummy he brought up as he picked her back up to soothe her once again. He thought a part of his heart was fully dislodged from his chest. How dare he of let his little girl feel like that. Daniel tried to put Layla back on the bed once she’d calmed down but she clung round his neck and refused. Instead he turned around and sat her on his lap, his arms still around her.

“Hey, let daddy see your pretty face.” Very slowly she retracted from his neck. Her big brown eyes riddled with tears, shiny tracks down her face. Her dummy still firmly in place with only her red cheeks showing either side. “Your mummy and I love you so soooo much little one.” He begins, unsure of where to take the conversation. “Just because sissy is here doesn’t mean we have gone away. Lily just keeps mummy very busy cause she has to eat and drink with mummy. Remember when you ate and drank with mummy?” Layla gave a quick nod of her head. It took you forever to ween Layla so she only stopped feeding about a year ago when she turned two. “You know how much it made you big and strong just like big girl food does now?” Again Layla gave a little nod, one of her thick curls falling only her face. Daniel pushed it back lightly, “So Lily needs to spend lots of time with mummy so she can get big and strong like you did. Then she can play with you when she’s bigger.” Layla looked blankly at her dad. Daniel was unsure what else to say. How could you explain loving children equally to a newly three year old. Until he remembered what Michelle told Isaac. He gave Layla’s forehead a gentle kiss and pulled her in tighter for a cuddle. “You know how you have lots of teddy bears and you love all of them the same? That’s like mummy and daddy with you and Lily. We love you both the very same. But Lily does stinky nappies so we have to help her more so she’s not smelly.” Daniel tried his shot at a joke to lighten the little girls mood. Much to his amusement it works and the little girl giggles. “Will we go see if Lily is stinky for mummy?” Layla sneaks her head out and nods once more.

Standing up, still holding his now exhausted princess, he makes his way downstairs. Your lying on the couch, finally getting a break while Lily sleeps in her basket to your left. “Hi babygirl, you okay?” you ask as Layla reaches for you out of Daniels arms. “Careful baby mummy is still-” “it’s okay mummy is fine. Very happy to see her big girl. Mummy wants all the cuddles cause daddy has had loads. Greedy daddy.” you say squeezing her as you speak. Giggling loudly she says “silly mummy.” Daniel knows you just don’t want her to feel rejected by you, so ignoring how uncomfortable it was sitting right would have to suffice.

“Daniel…Daniel” you say throwing a muslin at him. “Dan wake up babe.” He leans forward off the sofa which you all appear to have fallen asleep on after watching an episode or two of paw patrol while Layla caught you up on the nursery drama and art projects. “Lily is about to fuss but Layla is fast asleep can you take her before she wakes up.” Daniel nods sleepily. “Cmere princess” He says lifting her off you and she quickly snuggles into his arms. You pick up Lily and begin feeding her before she gets the chance to cry. Dan and you smile at each other through the dim lighting of the living room. “We are gonna get pretty good at this double the trouble stuff” you whisper at him. “Just wait till we are outnumbered. We need that boy, darling.” Daniel winks back at you, a hand sliding up and down your thigh. “In your dreamiest of dreams Ricciardo. Not for at least another 2 years.” “Oh yeah cause Lily was planned” He rolls his eyes and you gently slap the shoulder Layla’s head isn’t on. “I don’t know if your sperm can create boys Riccy” You joke at him and move to burp Lily. “My sperm are perfectly capable of making boys thank you very much and in 1 year 11 months and 28 days i’ll prove that.” You giggle and his stupidity and shake your head. “I never thought i’d be sitting on this couch talking about your sperms’ capability while holding our two children.” Daniel laughs loudly then covers his mouth checking quickly he hasn’t woken either of his babies. Sliding closer to you, her puts and arm around you. “I love you, thank you for your capabilities of growing them.” You make a disgusted face but kiss him softly none the less. Leaning your head on his shoulder and enjoying a moment of reflection and silence.

[variousqueerthings]

The thing I wrote once that got eaten by my crashing internet when I was almost finished (and I think the new version contains all the original points, but alas my instinctive sparkling wit is now more forced through recreation)

Speaking of analysis of “Hawkeye flirting with men is fascinating because of its lack of homophobia,” there was in fact a homophobic/transphobic joke in the last episode we watched, as a form of “friendly” ribbing, which is what you’d usually expect from that sort of comedy (and of this kind of social space)

Radar is modelling a dress for Margaret that she’s helping get together so a Korean couple can get married on the base – I mention that they’re Korean because then I can 1. Fawn over the beautiful, colourful dress, and 2. Briefly point out the character growth continues for Margaret (including how short she is every time Frank tries to find commonality with her through racism. Margaret being mean to Frank is currently one of our favourite things to watch)

Radar is already uncomfortable wearing the dress, when two tertiary characters (Igor and ??) come in and start flirting at him, making him even more distressed -- and then they leave. It’s not an interaction that means much to the characters, forgotten almost as soon as it’s happened, and quite probably not meant to be a particularly deep scene that would foster a comparison of queer narrative and comedy in the rest of the show (enter me, stage left)

The “joke” is that because Radar is wearing the dress, they’re allowed to strip him of his masculinity. The threat – not technically meant to be considered “real” here, as it’s just fond ribbing, and he’ll be taking off the dress soon to reestablish the natural order (or so it would usually be, except Klinger is a main character) – is that Radar is now considered fair game to suffer the sexual harassment that women face.

This is often further fanged by the idea that someone performing incorrect femininity/crossing gender borders could also be treated with disgust and ridicule on top of the sexual harassment, so as to ward off the idea that there’s any “real” attraction/homosexuality on the part of the harasser.

The second part isn’t really happening in the “joke” harassment, because they all know that Radar isn’t really dressing as a woman and none of them think he would. It is however enforced by the story that Radar tells of someone in his hometown called “Boris” who wears women’s clothing and is called a sissy by Radar’s uncle. The threat here is very real (real enough that I couldn’t help a small breath-hold, despite knowing where this story would likely end) until it is subverted by Boris punching the lights out of Radar’s uncle. But the threat isn’t really gone, because, unlike Radar, Boris won’t be able to diffuse the threat by stepping out of dresses again. Boris wears dresses and harassment is presumably commonplace. Somewhere outside of this army unit, the threats that inspire this kind of joke are still very real.

However here in Korea things work a little differently: Another reason there isn’t any real threat of violence against Radar, is that we all know that Klinger wears dresses often and isn’t generally treated disrespectfully, although he is at times called a freak or a pervert – mostly by Frank, who’s practically always meant to be in the wrong whenever he does anything, but occasionally by other men as a cheap shot.

The joke isn’t simply “a man wearing a dress,” it’s “Radar is very easy to distress.” Noticeably Klinger comes in right after and gets angry that Radar is muscling in on his territory, reminding the audience that “oh yeah, they may be making jokes based on incorrect femininity, but it’s not entirely about putting Radar back in his proper place/reestablishing the status quo. The status quo includes Klinger (at least while they’re all in Korea).”

The thing about Klinger is that the show has largely moved on from the “man in a dress is funny” joke -- which was why it was so noticeable with Radar and begged for an analysis -- and even largely the idea that the dresses are a way of getting a Section 8 discharge (a flimsier excuse every season). The funny thing is the surface-level surrealism in that a relatively sizeable bit of narrative is given to the trials and tribulations of owning a fantastic wardrobe, and that this story is being told by someone that at the time was presumably written to be considered a man most of the time (I imagine a lot of us have headcanons in which Klinger’s gender is far more fluid).

Even the people still laughing at Klinger are probably excited to see… what will the next dress look like? The power is -- most of the time -- in Klinger’s hands, in a way it isn’t with Radar or with Boris (sidenote: am I imprinting on Boris, whom I’ll never hear about again? Maybe).

If Radar getting teased for being in a dress were the only joke of this kind on the show, I’d probably shrug and go, “it’s a show set in the 50s, and I know men’s-intensive spaces today, if not funny it is realistic (although not as realistic or as interesting as what the show is actually doing with Klinger).”

But there is tons of comedy centered around men flirting with men, and most of it is, as we know, coming from Hawkeye.

Hawkeye doesn’t flirt with men like the two men in this scene flirt at Radar. When he’s doing it to be provocative, it’s usually not to harass or demasculinize, but to laugh as the other man slams into his own homophobia. What to do? Ignore it and allow yourself to be flirted at? Protest the flirting and take a “joke” too seriously? Flirt back in a game of chicken? (as if Hawkeye would ever lose a game of chicken). This is mostly seen when he’s aiming it at Frank – there was also that time he dipped him and smooched him full on the mouth, but I take that as very firmly in the category of “Hawkeye doesn’t know where the limit is” (and on that note, I think he ought to kiss another man who does want to be kissed for the sake of equilibrium, but then there wouldn’t be the acceptable boundary of “he’s kissing Frank who definitely doesn’t want to be kissed by Hawkeye, so there’s an element of no-homo built into the act.” -- also on that note thinks about the mysterious kiss that Trapper left him via Radar).

Of course, most of the time Hawkeye flirts with his friends: these days mainly BJ, Klinger, Mulcahy, Sidney, and even Potter on occasion, and of course Margaret, although she’s still figuring out that his teasing is affectionate. Radar less so, but he’s also got more of a youngest-child dynamic with everyone, and I’d have to go back to see how it materialised with Trapper, because I only really started on my noting down frequency after season 3 (but he definitely flirted. he insinuated. he opened his mouth and words came out, which amounts to the same a lot of the time).

I’ve already mentioned in other posts that a lot of these are presented as-is. Most of the time it’s a short call-and-response (have I ever told you that in this light you look like Greer Garson – what movie? – Mrs Miniver), but especially with BJ they’re sometimes full conversations or spread over multiple scenes.

Hawkeye will knit while beginning the overtures to an invented sexual fantasy for BJ. He’ll needle him as if he’s an insulted spouse when he thinks he’s not being appreciated enough. He’ll make jokes about losing his virginity to him (he makes jokes about losing his virginity to men more than a couple of times). He’ll talk about going dancing after the war.

And I’m still relatively near the beginning of their relationship, watching-wise, who knows what else I still have to look forward to.

The joke is its impossibility. But at what point does it become possible? At what point does “Hawkeye flirts with men” allow itself to be read as exactly what it is: Hawkeye flirts with men. (Trick question, it was the very first time).

*

It’s very interesting to think about how bigotry and acceptance have often existed side by side (and often still do), within the same people who will accept one possible man wearing a dress in one circumstance but not in another, and to see that on the show even if it probably wasn’t intended to be as scrutinised in the way I am, rather than just... portraying it as it was.

The scene with Radar wasn’t meant to be that deep, but it’s a great piece of the puzzle of the rituals of acceptable heterocisness as is embedded in any story like this.

And it’s interesting that -- despite being the main POV character -- Hawkeye is a “safe” harbour of queer exploration, because he’s a serious character who hides behind jokes on a serious show that hides behind jokes. (I’m using “hides” in absence of the word I’m looking for, because none of it is really hiding at all -- hiding in plain sight by being incredibly honest).

I think about the way queerness has always manifested strongly in same-gender (ostensibly -- gender was always more fluid than that) spaces – often with a reactionary fear right behind it or surrounding it. Men who wore dresses in POW camps and took on women’s social roles, nuns having sex with nuns, sports changing rooms…

And lastly I think about how writing anything that has a lot of people of the same gender in it (again, ostensibly) mimics that queer manifestation, and how queerness is so inherent to storytelling and you the writer -- who may not have considered that you were writing anything queer at all -- have the choice to either play with whatever possibly unnamed dynamic that the text is telling you to lean into, or to fight it every step of the way.

And it seems like MASH, in a lot of ways, did the former. Obviously I know Hawkeye won’t make out with a bunch of guys, but he’s allowed to act in the way that he does without the show itself panicking and doubling down on the cishetero-acceptability that other shows have done and still do. And Klinger is a main character now!

[vennilavee]

starry eyes

pairing: levi x reader (moon/stars universe) ft kaiya and rina!! summary: some moments through your pregnancy with baby Peach. warnings: pregnancy, cursing, details of a difficult pregnancy, c-section delivery, blood mention a/n: for this drabble prompt req “give me more picking out baby names, painting nurseries, and cradling their children. For moon and stars please”. but it ended up being 2.6k. i didn’t include the part about painting nurseries bc i want that to be it’s own drabble/part of another part of the story!

“Do you think we should have Peach share a room with Kaiya when she’s old enough?” You muse, “We only have our bedroom and Kaiya’s…”

Levi hums and scratches his chin. He absently places a hand over your growing belly- you’ve only started showing in the last week or two.

“Kaiya will be five years older than Peach,” Levi says, “She will need her own space.”

“Then we need more space,” You say with a raise of your eyebrow, “We only have two bedrooms, baby.”

“What shitty timing,” Levi sighs, throwing his head back against the headboard of the bed, “Is this a good time to move into another house? We haven’t even started looking-”

“We can either do it now or when Peach is a few months old,” You say, leaning your head on his shoulder, “You and Erwin spent so much time decorating Kaiya’s room and painting the walls…”

“We can do that at the new house,” Levi says, “And Kai can do it with us.” He kisses your forehead and continues rubbing your belly absently.

“Are we making this decision too quickly? Shouldn’t we think about it more,” You wonder out loud.

“We need more space,” Levi says simply, “We got a baby coming. Or did you forget?”

“How could I forget?” You roll your eyes, “You knocked me up. Again.”

“Shut up,” Levi rolls his eyes and pulls you in for a kiss. And then flicks your forehead.

House hunting was a much quicker affair than you had anticipated it to be- Levi had a sixth sense for this type of thing (and it had long begun to rub off on you, too). You had been looking at houses with Kaiya for about two months now, without any luck of a space that you could truly see yourself living in with your family.

Kaiya dutifully holds your hand as she explores the new kitchen, peering into the glossy, light green cabinets and giggling when she sees her reflection in a small mirror.

She gasps when she sees the size of the backyard, bouncing on the balls of her feet excitedly. “Mommy, look ousside,” She whispers, “Pwetty.”

“It is, isn’t it?” You reply, giving her a smile.

Levi has a mental checklist of questions to ask, and you do too, but he can see you falling in love with the house already. It’s cute and has charm- he can tell you’re already envisioning where Kaiya and the currently unnamed baby would play in the living room, where you’d set up your sewing materials…

Because he’s thinking about the same. He’s thinking about what Kaiya might want to paint her walls and how to set up the new baby’s room, about where his wine collection might go and his favorite leather chair.

Sometimes when you know, you just know. He has a good feeling about this place and the more the real estate agent tells you both, the more you subtly fall in love with the house. You feel like you’re a character in a small fairytale when you climb the staircase and get a view of the yard from the bedroom.

“Honey,” You say softly, tugging on his sleeve.

“Hmm,” He says and scoops Kaiya in his arms when she lifts her arms up.

“Daddy, mommy say she like it,” Kaiya whispers. Or attempts to.

“Oh, is that what mommy said?” Levi says, eyes lit up with amusement.

“Kiki, tell daddy that mommy loves the house very much.”

“Daddy, mommy say-”

“Daddy likes the house, too,” Levi says and you beam at him.

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Really!” Kaiya exclaims, her arms outstretched.

And that’s that.

Moving and settling the paperwork had taken another month despite Levi’s attempts on speeding up the process. You had insisted on helping with the physical labor of moving, despite Erwin, Hange, Eren, Jean, Armin, Connie, Sasha and Mikasa volunteering to help you and Levi move.

Kaiya sat on one of the boxes that Jean and Eren carried out of the current apartment with a yellow hard hat on her head, directing them outside of the apartment to stack the boxes by the elevator.

“Baby,” You mumble, tugging Levi’s hand, “A house. We bought a house together.”

“Yeah,” Levi says, “Guess I’m stuck with you now, huh?”

You ignore him and peck his cheek. Your eyes have been watering on and off all day, memories of this apartment and of the initial stages of your relationship blossoming hidden in the spaces between the walls, between each shelf and cabinet.

“We fell in love here,” You say thickly, “We created love here.”

“We did,” Levi says softly, rolling his thumb over your hand, “Kaiya started walking right over there-” He points to the empty space of the living room, “You broke a wine glass over here-” He points to the space where the small dining table used to be, “And Kaiya’s birthdays were here…”

“Stop,” You complain, “I’m gonna cry again.”

Levi lets out a soft chuckle, “The new house is gonna have all of that and more. With this kid.” Levi palms your belly and kisses your temple.

Your second trimester, as it was with Kaiya, is relatively easy in comparison to the first trimester. You and Levi take the ease that comes with the second trimester to plan out what the nursery in the new house will look like when the baby is old enough to sleep alone. 

The new house is a cozy four bedroom house (complete with a guest room) and plenty of room for play and relaxation. You had converted one of the rooms on the first floor into a small office for Levi, as he was able to work from home more often than you were.

Kaiya had demanded that her room be space themed. So you and Levi had painted her bedroom a pretty pale blue, decorated with glow in the dark stars and planets across her ceiling and the walls. A grey full moon hangs on one of the walls, along with frames of the planets, galaxies and Kaiya’s own drawings of the solar system (and really whatever else she wants). 

She had even painted some stars on the side of the wall where her bed is, with Erwin’s help. Her bedding is navy blue with gold stars printed on it and of course, she has her stuffed elephant, her stuffed sun and her stuffed moon on her bed. A galaxy projector sits on her nightstand, and she loves to turn it on when Levi reads her a bedtime story.

Seeing her reaction made you cry, too.

Now was the hard part. Determining what to paint the walls for the growing peach in your belly. You and Levi go back and forth on muted yellow, olive green, and pale green-

“Do you want Peach to think they’re in a forest?”

“But green is such a calming color!”

“So is yellow, yellow is happy-”

“You think a newborn baby will know that?”

“We should create an atmosphere of relaxation and happiness-”

In the end you and Levi decide on a yellow and green theme, with accents of grey. Compromise. You both decide to hold off on painting the walls, until Peach is a little older to decide on what they want to accent the walls. Kaiya’s old crib sits in your bedroom for when Peach arrives, which somehow feels like it’s creeping up on you but still so far away.

Your second trimester is when you can’t get enough of Levi- every small action he does, whether it’s cooking dinner, putting things away from unpacked boxes or giving you a foot rub- makes you want to jump his bones every chance you get.

You’re glad your man can keep up with you. And Levi makes it well known how much he loves you and loves your body. He always has a hand on your hips, your waist, your chest whenever he can.

You bask in the attention. Your skin glows, your hair is healthy and your nails full.

And then the third trimester comes, and it’s possibly the most difficult experience you’ve ever had to stomach. The third trimester is complete with backaches, frequent heartburn, varicose veins and mood swings that give Levi whiplash.

Your mood swings weren’t this intense with Kaiya. But he knows every pregnancy is different. You’re uncomfortable in your own skin and distressed and so tired in the last few months.

In the last few months, you and Levi settle on a name- you’d found out that Peach was in fact a baby girl, and Kaiya was upset that she wouldn’t be able to refer to her baby sister as Peach any longer-

“Let’s name my sissy ‘Berry’ then.”

“That’s not any better than Peach, honey.”

In the end, after a few weeks of deliberating, you decide on Rina Ackerman. You had tossed around the idea of naming her after Levi’s mother, Kuchel, but Levi shot it down. He didn’t want his kids to have the burden of living up to a legacy that they knew nothing about.

You could understand that.

Levi and Kaiya help where they can. Levi holds you when you cry and he rubs your belly and your back when it gets to be too much. You tell him that this baby feels different, that you’re scared. So when you start having contractions about four weeks too early, you’re not surprised. 

You scream and you cry, terrified that something’s gone wrong when you spot blood pooling on the bed. Levi looks at you with wide eyes before jumping into action quickly.

He holds your hand tightly, grateful that Kaiya is with his mom and Kenny for the day.

Once you reach the hospital, you’re a mess, almost refusing to let the doctors look at you. You’re terrified that something awful and terrible has happened, and Levi looks you in the eye with your hands tight in his-

“You can do this. You have to do this. For Rina. She needs you.”

“She’s too early, Levi, I can’t-”

“She’s strong. Like her mother.”

In the end, Rina is delivered via an emergency C-section. Levi only sees and holds her impossibly tiny body for a moment before she starts to cry and she’s whisked away by the nurses and doctors. You’re still sedated in the hospital bed.

He sits in the blue plastic chair in your room and holds his head in his hands. 

It’s hard for Levi to believe that that melancholy morning in the hospital was a little over two years ago. When he sees his youngest little girl, strong and quick on her feet, being chased by her older sister, he can’t believe that she came out into the world in such a difficult manner.

You like to joke and say that Rina is a troublemaker and she liked causing a scene right from the first breath of air she took.

Levi feels like his heart stops whenever he sees Rina fall or nearly injure herself. It’s different than it was with Kaiya- maybe because he was the only one who saw her struggle to breathe during her first moments. It’s hard for him to lose the overprotectiveness he has with Rina that didn’t necessarily exist with Kaiya. Of course, he was protective over his oldest, but it just feels different.

He doesn’t want Kaiya to feel like Levi has favoritism over his two best girls. But he can’t shake this feeling.

You recognize it in his eyes even if he says nothing. You see it in the shine of his grey irises, the way they’re panicked only for a millisecond when he hears Rina’s first cry whenever she falls.

The Ackerman family is currently in the backyard, on a nice summer evening. You’re sitting on a picnic blanket with your legs outstretched and a small smile on your face as you watch your babies run around and chase each other. Rina is still clumsy on her feet, almost waddling after Kaiya before she gets distracted by a patch of grass. She immediately plops down and pats the grass under her and pulls at the grass as hard as she can, throwing the pieces up in the air and squealing happily.

“Kaiya!” Rina exclaims, “Kaiya!”

Kaiya sits across from her with a beaming smile and her hands outstretched and Rina gently places the pieces of grass in her hands. 

“Hey, thanks, ‘Ina,” Kaiya smiles and Rina bashfully hides her face. She crawls to her big sister and sits in her lap, playing with the flowers and pointing to the small garden that Kaiya and you had been working on.

“Let’s go to the flowers,” Kaiya says and holds her hand as they both waddle to the garden patch.

“Mommy’s growin’ fruits and veggies here,” Kaiya says, pointing at cucumbers and okra, “I pretend like I don’t like them, but I do.”

Kaiya laughs and Rina giggles, too. Rina watches Kaiya with identical eyes, wide and grey and full of wonder. She catches sight of her daddy and lets go of Kaiya’s hand to waddle to Levi.

You nudge Levi’s foot and he stretches his arms out for her. Rina concentrates on Levi, smiling as he gets closer and closer as she walks towards him. But she’s small and she’s clumsy, so she lands on her fresh overalls, knees in the dirt.

Levi is about to jump to his feet but you stop him with a hand to his chest. Rina only stands up with wobbly legs before resuming her walk to Levi.

She nearly jumps into his lap and bounces in his arms when he holds her close. Levi adjusts her sparkly purple headband and Rina just beams at him, standing on her feet and tugging the strands of hair that fall into his eyes. 

“Daddy,” Rina whispers and reaches into her pocket. She pulls out a few pieces of grass and shoves it in his face. “For you, daddy.”

Her fingers are dirty, coated in soil and dirt and Levi winces. But how can he focus on that when his baby is offering him the gift of the earth?

“Thank you, Rina,” Levi says quietly and kisses her forehead. Rina smiles, satisfied, before settling in his lap and giggling when you pull funny faces at her.

Levi hugs his youngest close, gesturing for Kaiya to come join him. She immediately plops down next to him and Levi wraps an arm around her shoulder.

“You’re getting too tall,” Levi says to Kaiya, who takes it as a compliment.

“My teacher says I’m tallest,” Kaiya beams at him. He pats her head affectionately.

“Come here, mommy,” Kaiya calls. Not like you were too far, anyway. Rina is busy playing with Levi’s long fingers and clutching them in her chubby hands. She gasps when she sees you approaching, outstretching her arms for your attention. You come bearing freshly cut fruit and juice before sitting down next to Levi and pecking his cheek.

“Mommy has melons,” You chirp and Levi snorts. 

“Yeah, she does,” Levi says with an upturn of his lips. Only you catch the teasing bite of his tone.

“Mello!” Rina chirps happily, eyeing the watermelon in your plate.

“It’s for you Rina,” You say, and cut up the piece into smaller pieces.

Levi lives for quiet summer nights like this- nights with his girls with the setting sun and a light breeze. Nights with you in a cute sundress, Kaiya and Rina smiling and laughing. 

He doesn’t think he can ever get used to how his girls’ laugh makes his heart swell.

tags: @simpingmaize​ @captainchrisstan​ @kentobean​ @alrightberries​ @puredivinity​ @regalillegal​ @castellandiangelo​

[hxney-lemcn]

Seven Stages (Pt. 3)

Word Count: 1.2k

Pairing: Five Hargreeves x reader

Fandom: The Umbrella Academy

Warning: Swearing, season 2 spoilers

Main Master List | TUA Master List

Part One | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five

“Authorities are asking for help identifying several persons of interest at Dealey Plaza at the time of assassination. The FBI believes they may have been acting in concert with the alleged shooter, Lee Harvey Oswald. Vanya Hargreeves, wanted in connection with the deaths of several FBI agents inside federal building at Dealey Plaza. A Cubin exile known only as Diego, who recently escaped from the Holbrook Sanitorium. A bare-knuckle boxer with suspected mafia ties who fights under the alias “King Kong”. Allison Chestnut, a negro radical responsible for instigating and organizing the recent riots at Stadler’s lunch counter. And finally, Klaus, a controversial cult leader and known tax evader. The FBI is asking the public to be on look out for this unidentified boy and girl who they believe is being held hostage by the suspected terrorist network...” 

“Well, it’s true,” Five spoke up, stealing my attention which was previously on the tv. “I do feel like I’m being held hostage most days.” I rolled my eyes but couldn’t help but slightly agree.

“God I hate that photo,” Diego muttered.

“They’re saying I instigated the riot?” Allison asked incredulously. “That’s unbelievable.”

“Look, the good news is that we restored the timeline,” Luther pointed out.

“We did stop doomsday,” I chimed in.

“Yeah, a bunch of real goddamn heroes,” Diego scoffed. “We let Kennedy die.” Again with this bullshit. 

“Yeah, and now we’re the most wanted people in the world,” Allison added. Can’t we at least celebrate one victory? Five worked so hard to stop everyone from dying and they don’t even give him the time of day. She went on about how we need to hide but I knew we needed to do something else.

“Hiding isn’t gonna change anything,” I said crossing my arms. “The Commission will follow us wherever and whenever we go.” 

“She’s right,” Diego agreed. “They’ll never stop.”

“I’m sorry, since when are you an expert on the Commission?” Five asked sarcastically.

“Since I got back from there,” Diego replied.

“What?” I asked not believing it.

“Yeah, they headhunted me,” Diego replied. “Offered me a job. Full time with benefits which I had to turn down.”

Five gave him the most sarcastic look before saying, “They headhunted you...the village idiot?”

“What?” Diego asked standing up straighter. “Am I not allowed to be headhunted? Only the almighty Five and his girlfriend are allowed to be in demand?” My eyes widened and I felt my cheeks flush red. I opened my mouth to argue but Five beat me to it.

“Diego, you’re not commission material, all right?” Five stated. “Got an obstinate nature to ya.” 

“Who do you think it was that figured out that Vanya was the one that causes doomsday and stopped it?” Diego asks rhetorically. “Me.”

“Hey!” Klaus calls out in defiance. 

“I figured it all out on the infinite switchboard,” Diego continues.

“You were on the infinite switchboard?” I asked surprised.

“Hell yeah,” Diego confirmed. “I made that machine my bitch.” Okay, not being able to listen on I sat down on the stairs in front of Allison. Everyone started to get in on the arguing so I zoned out. Why didn’t Five deny me being his girlfriend? Did he just ignore the comment? Or did he possibly feel the same? Wait did I just think feel the same? No way do I like that asshole...

“I’m leaving,” Vanya speaks up catching my attention. 

“What?” Allison asks, her protective sister side showing. “To go where?” 

“Sissy’s farm,” Vanya answered. “Something’s wrong with Harlan, and I need to help him.”

“Vanya, we need to stick together, okay?” Luther replies. “Now more than ever.”

“That’s why I’m telling you this,” Vanya continues. “What ever is going on with Harlan, I think I might’ve caused it.”

“How?” I couldn’t help but ask.

“He drowned, and, uh, somehow I was able to bring him back to life,” She explained. “And now it’s like we’re connected.”

“W-what does that m-mean?” Luther stuttered confused.

“I don’t know, I can’t explain,” Vanya sighed. “But I know that he need my help. I need your help too. I’m scared. And for the first time in my life I don’t want to do it alone. I want my family by my side.” 

Everyone seemed to look away and I felt my stomach drop. I may have been a time assassin my entire life but damn I wasn’t this heartless. 

“Look, I’m sorry,” Diego spoke up walking closer to Vanya. “We have other priorities right now.”

“Diego’s right,” Five agreed. “For once. We need to make our stand here and now.” You know what, if no one else is gonna go I might as well. I may not be her family but I can tell she’s going to go with or without them and I don’t want her to go alone. 

I stood up but before I could say anything Five stopped me. He shook his head and right then I was about to do something I might regret. 

“Okay,” Vanya said dejectedly. “I guess I’ll see you when I see you.” Five walked away and dragged me with him.

“What the fuck was that about!” I shouted feeling my anger rise. “If none of you assholes are gonna go with her I am!”

“We need to focus on getting back to 2019,” Five countered calmly. 

“She’s your sister!” I exclaimed. “Doomsday is over! We have a little time.” He looked me in the eye and his eyebrows furrowed. It looked like he was mulling over his options. He nodded in agreement and reluctantly agreed. A small smile formed over my face knowing that he’s a major softie for his family. “Let’s go then!” I exclaimed grabbing his hand and dragging him behind me. 

Allison and Diego seemed to have the same idea as us because they were already out the door. Luther looked at us, surprised that we were following. Five wiggled out of my grip and walked slightly ahead of me, opening the passenger door showing Klaus sitting there. 

“Five, you...” Vanya trailed off. “You don’t have to...”

“I know,” He smirked. “You owe me one sis.” I smacked his arm and he rolled his eyes playfully. Turning to Klaus he spoke, “Children ride in the back.”

“Okay,” Klaus agreed willfully and crawled into the back making me smile. Five sat in the passenger seat and I realized there wasn’t going to be any room for me. I stood there awkwardly and Five seemed to notice and raised an eyebrow at me with a smirk. 

“I can find another ride,” I smiled awkwardly. I mean can you blame me? This is like a family bonding moment and I’m just...here.

“No you don’t,” Five countered grabbing my wrist. 

“You’re apart of this family now whether you like it or not,” Klaus chimed in with a giggle. 

“But there’s no more room-” I got cut off by Five placing me next to him. We barely had any room and half my leg was on his. I felt embarrassed and felt my cheeks slightly heat up. 

“Guy’s,” Vanya said with a happy smile. “I don’t know what to say.” I was so happy that the Hargreeves realized how important family is. The trunk opened and Luther climbed into the trunk and I had to stare forward to not laugh at how the car barely supported his weight. 

“Anyone makes a fat joke and I’m outta here,” Luther said which made it even harder not to laugh. I mean I had to cover my mouth with my hand to stop myself from snorting. Vanya pulled out, the exhaust pipe dragging on the ground the entire ride. 

[tsunchani]

Christmas Present

❃   pairing: Jay x female!reader

❃   genre: fluff

❃   wc: 738

❃ rating: G

❃   warning: -

❃   pritty's note: Jay being a hyung also boyfriend just ugh-

credits: https://pin.it/78U6tLP (picture's not mine!)

“where is Jay hyung?” your little brother asked in your arms, you were walking to the boys waiting room behind the stage since they promoting their comeback. Bowing to the staffs as they bowed back, they already knew you since debut so they did not sop you.

“Jay hyung is at the waiting room, Sunwoo…” “are we going to meet him?”

“yes we are… since you are his Christmas present!” you whispered to him softly, his eyes locked with yours, excited.

“really?!” he yelled happily, quickly put your index finger at your lips, he followed you soon and giggled.

“yess… it is our secret okay? He does not know we are here.” He nodded his own head, kissing his forehead and continuing walked to the waiting room.

Near to the waiting room, you put down your little brother to stand beside you. Sunwoo held your hand before you opened the waiting room door. Soon you being greeted by the managers, staffs, they greeted Sunwoo too and played with him.

“y/n!” you looked up and saw your boyfriend walking towards you with his shocked expression. 

“Jay!” hugging him with his stage uniform soon.

‘what are you doing here?” he hugged you closed and whispered “I missed you”

“surprise!” you said before pecking his cheek. he leaned down to kiss your lips but being interrupted by your little brother.

“Jay hyung!” Sunwoo ran from the managers arms to his direction, Jay crunched down opening his arms bigger for Sunwoo to hug him.

“Sunwoo-ah! Wow, you’re getting taller! hyung is gonna loose height soon!” Sunwoo giggled and nodded his head at the fact.

“of course i will hyung! i am going to get taller nowdays, to make you loose!” Sunwoo laughed as Jay made a hurtful face

“oh... i missed you so much, Sunwoo-ah” jay whispered softly as his hand behind the little boy head, swaying his body to make your brother comfortable in his arms. they were hugging in front of your eyes, your heart fluttered whenever you see Jay with your little brother.

“what are you doing here, sunwoo-ah?”

“Surprise! I am your Christmas present!” Sunwoo said happily with his hands on the air, Jay stared at him shockingly.

“who told you that you’re my Christmas present?” Sunwoo pointed at you, you did not know because you were talking with Heesung as he was your friend.

“ah, really? Sissy told you this?” Jay looked from you to your brother, smiling that his Christmas present was here before his performing. Sunwoo nodded and hugged his hyung.

“are you nervous, hyung?” Jay quickly shook his head, Sunwoo stared at him confusedly

“because you and your lovely sister are here! So, I am not nervous at all!” soon you joined with them talking and playing for a while on the hot mat soon Sunwoo was sleeping in Jay’s arm. Jay was very happy and calm when you and Sunwoo were here, he was not able to meet you since his comeback was nearby and did not have time to meet their own families for Christmas.

“enhypen, be ready!” the staffs yelled as the boys yelled “yes!” soon the quickly put their microphones head and put their stage costumes. You helped Jay with his suit behind his back before he straightened his jacket, examining himself in front of the mirror before turning back to look at you. you fixed his collar softly before you patted it, you looked at him since he watched you after he was facing you.

“there! Go now…” you shooed Jay but he still stood in front of you, raising your eyebrows

“why aren’t you walk? You are late!” he puckered his lips

“no comeback kiss?”

You smiled and chuckled, pushing his back since the manager was waiting him at the door.

“no, you got plenty time with my brother and no from me of course. So, chop chop now before your fans mad at me.” he quickly turned his back and placed a peck at your lips, you stare at him shockingly. his lips tugged upwards and smirked

“goodluck comeback!” he said with swag you nearly cursed inside your mind.

“don’t wake Sunwoo up for me, still sleeping!”  fixing his microphone and walking toward his manager. he patted the manager back as the manager smiled to you and closed the door. Scoffing and chuckling, hands at your hip as you rolled your eyes

“he sure is an unpredictable man.”

[sissytobitch10seconds]

Gentle Hands and Warm Hearts

Fandom: Grishaverse: Six of Crows Summary: The whole point of the polycule is so that each of them can get the care that they need without putting it all on one other person. That should, arguably, mean that Jesper and Nina don't have to do this but they find themselves hiding it away every time they do, as if it's something shameful. Or, the five times that Jesper and Nina got caught together and the one time that they sought their partners out. Warnings: Mentions of child abuse, haphephobia, mentions of sexual abuse, minor sexual content, and anxiety Word Count: 6,226 Ship(s): Nina Zenik/Jesper Fahey/Wylan Van Eck/Matthias Helvar/Inej Ghafa/Kaz Brekker

Archive link!

A/N: So I really like this idea but I'm not entirely happy with the execution. I feel like the dialogue in this fic is a bit awkward and I had to correct a lot of stuff. I think that it's come out a little bit better than when I found it, but I'm not entirely happy with it yet. I hope that you can all still enjoy it, though! Stay sissy and bitchy everyone &lt;3

1.

They were all clamored around each other, as they often were on date nights. Matthias had his arm looped around Wylan’s hips to keep the smaller man somewhat close to him, though they would both take several minute breaks whenever the touch began to get too much for them. It was hard to adjust to having so many partners when they had gone almost their entire life with touch being out of reach, after all. Kaz knew the feeling, since, while he had been able to overcome his haphephobia enough to maintain the kind of relationship that he wanted with his partners on most days, there were times that he still felt the waters of the harbor lapping at his ankles. He knew that Inej was going through the same thing, wading through hip-deep memories of when she had been in the same place as the people that she was now saving.

They reached the theater without anyone stopping them and with very few people staring at them. The only exception was when Nina had begun begging Kaz and Matthias to let her have some of the fried bread that was being sold in a cart outside of the entrance. They had given into her almost immediately, neither of them were very good about saying no to her when she looked at them with that delicately pouting lip.

They were shown up to the private box that Kaz had reserved for them so that they could watch the show without having to worry about people behind them. He sat in the front row with Inej beside him, though there was a chair between them so that they could speak to each other without being overwhelmed. Matthias and Wylan sat with a chair between them and the other duo, though they were next to each other with the arm down between them.

“Why are you sitting so far away from us?” Kaz asked when he turned and saw that Jesper had taken up residence in the row behind them.

“Nina and I are going to be very annoying during this show,” Jesper explained with a half shrug. “We didn’t want to ruin it for everyone else by making fun of every other thing the whole time.”

That was a reasonable enough explanation for everyone, so they turned their attention back to the stage. None of them turned around when they heard Nina return to their box with the concessions that she had slipped away to buy for herself. She dropped a candybar down into each of their laps without touching any of them and then flopped down into the chair beside Jesper so that she mirrored the other duo.

The stage lights lit up as everything else was dimmed so that their attention was on the actors alone. The music picked up when the two leads stepped out on stage during their first scene together, keeping each member of the polycule transfixed on what was happening. The score mixed very well with the script that the troupe had chosen. The story itself was a little bit dull, but the performance, combined with the aerialists swinging through the air in increasingly complicated styles, were enough to keep the entire audience fixated on the stage.

Throughout the entire play, just as they had promised, Jesper and Nina whispered to each other as they made jokes about what was happening. 

The intermission for the play came at about an hour into the proceedings. The curtain lowered and the aerialists climbed into the catwalk above so that they could reset for whatever was going to happen next. Nina and Jesper began to talk to each other louder to continue the jokes that they had been making when the rest of the theater came alive as well.

Kaz got up so that he could stretch out his leg in the cramped box. Matthias disappeared so that he could get something to eat while Wylan stretched out, long and cat-like in his seat. He turned to Inej so that he could strike up a conversation with her about what went into the tricks that they were doing on the stage, which she was very happy to entertain.

Kaz watched her talk for a while, admiring the side of her face and the shining brightness that she somehow always seemed to bring with her. He wished that he could hold her beauty in his hands at all times, to admire her elegance and the warmth that she flooded into the world no matter what. 

He was growing bored since he was listening to a conversation that he had with her more times than he could count. He turned his attention away from the giddy way that his girlfriend spoke to his boyfriend and instead directed it to Jesper and Nina.

She had a handful of popcorn halfway to her mouth while he balanced a kernel on the tip of his nose, his mouth wide open like it was somehow guaranteed that treat would fall down in that specific direction if it began to tip. Nina laughed with the joy of someone that was truly healed and free, no more the shaking, scared woman that she had been on the ship after she had taken the parem so that they could be free from Fjerda. Jesper looked brighter and happier, yet at the same time more grounded, than he had been in a very long time. Kaz knew that they were helping each other with their powers and learning how to love that part of themselves, something that none of the others could really relate to.

He let his eyes travel down and then smirked slightly when he realized what they were doing. Jesper’s dark brown skin stood starkly against the pale yet freckled shade that Nina’s was. Their fingers were also wildly different sizes, but they still fit together like a key sliding into the lock that it was made for.

Kaz leaned forward on the chairs, tilting his hips so that the throbbing pain decreased as much as it ever did. “Are you sure that the two of you didn’t just sit back there so that you could hold hands?” he asked, jerking them both from their activities.

Despite the odds, the kernel of popcorn did roll down off Jesper’s nose and directly into his open mouth. He threw both of his hands up into the air at the same time, which got the attention of their other two partners. Kaz noticed, with a bit of disappointment, that Nina had dropped his hand so that she could continue to shovel popcorn into her mouth. 

She stood and dumped the bucket down into Inej’s lap as she said, “I know that Matthias said he was going to go get some more but he’s so distracted with Wylan tonight that he’s likely to forget my sweet Inej, so I want to make sure that you had some.”

“Thank you, love,” Inej laughed, that warmth and brightness flooding out of her like an endless river. Kaz was then distracted from the confusion that the duo separating so quickly had brought to him, focusing instead on the antics that the rest of his partners were pulling.

2.

It was a very cold day in Ketterdam, but those were common. Wylan had grown up in the city in his entire life and even though he was often hidden behind big doors and windows that kept him separated both physically and metaphorically from the weather, he had been aware of it. He liked the cold, it made it easier for him to work in his lab without overheating. It also meant that he was more likely to find a cuddly Jesper when he walked home for lunch after his meetings with the Merchant Council.

He knew why they liked to meet in the mornings, since it was before a lot of the boats that they needed to do business with docked back in the harbors, but his lovers pulled so many late nights that if often left Wylan feeling absolutely exhausted.

He stifled a yawn behind the back of his hand and then pulled his heavy coat tighter around his body. He walked past one of the dewey storefront windows and had to stop for a minute so that he could examine himself. He had done something similar several years ago, when he was wearing the face of one of their closest friends.

This was far different than that was. He had the face that he had known the entire time that he was growing up, even if he had let Genya go a little further than he really should have. He had the same pale skin and bright blue eyes that he had seen over and over again when he had discovered that his mother was still alive. His chin had a gentle curve that went with the near-button nose in the center of his face. The thing that was different than when he normally looked at himself was his clothing.

He had been dressed in white button up shirts and pressed slacks for as long as he could remember, but wearing the black vests and overcoats that were typical of Merchers felt like he was putting on another costume. He knew that Kaz dressed like a Mercher to make the men that hoarded that power uncomfortable, a costume of sorts for him as well, but it was strange for Wylan to do the same thing. On one hand, he had inherited all of the land and fortune that his father had tried to deny him due to his inability to read, so he was actually a Mercher. On the other hand, he was still one of the international criminals that had broken into the Ice Court and stole one of the most wanted people in the entire world.

Wylan shook his head to clear it of the thoughts and continued home. He knew that everything felt heavier after one of those meetings because they took so much out of him. He wanted nothing more than to go home and check on the puppies that should have been fully whelped seeing as Matthias’ favorite bitch, a wolfhound named Mila, had gone into labor the night before. Coming home meant he also got to see most of his favorite people in the entire world, even if Kaz was going to be at work and Inej was one another one of her long voyages.

So he carried through the streets of Ketterdam until he approached East Stave. He slipped into the back alleys were no one would be able to tell where he was or follow him. He hadn’t known the paths of the city as well as Kaz had only a few years ago, but days of traveling using only them had piled into his repertoire so he could walk through any part of the city using any path.

He walked through the back door of his home and smiled when he heard the low voice of two of his partners in the living room, combined with the sound of a crackling fire. Wylan shed his heavy coat and hung it on the hook so that the wool would dry out, a couple droplets of rain had begun to come down when he had been on the last leg of his journey. He set the briefcase full of papers down in the office that he and Kaz used for when they had to bring their work home. Wylan was about to go on vacation so he didn’t have to find someone to help him read them just yet. 

Instead, he traveled up to the bedroom so that he could change into something that was more comfortable. The starched shirt and stiff pants were hung back up in the closet like they always were when he came back from one of his missions. He changed them out for a pair of comfortable brown slacks and a baggy gray shirt that kept out some of the cold that was still leaking through the well-sealed windows.

He traveled back down the stairs and then peaked into the massive room where Matthias kept his dogs, the only other door in it leading to the dog run that they had in their backyard. He was about to go check on the squirming mass of fur when he heard a snore emitting from his boyfriend. The birth of puppies was the most stressful part of breeding, according to Matthias, so he always stayed up to make sure that everything went smoothly when one of his bitches went into labor. Given that it had been early in the evening when Mila had started nesting, Wylan knew that Matthias had been awake almost all night.

Instead of going inside, he carefully shut the door and then walked towards the living room so that he could join the partners that he hadn’t seen yet. He stopped before he crossed the threshold when he noticed that something was off about the room.

Usually there was a long couch directly in front of the mantel, a loveseat kitty corner to the right side, and then a pair of chairs on the other side. They had a table that went in between the chairs and then a large coffee table pinning down the rug in the middle. It made the room closed enough that they felt like they were in a den, but open enough that no one had to be touching anyone else unless they wanted to.

It took Wylan only a minute before he realized what the difference in the space was. Someone had moved the couch back about six inches and had placed the coffee table behind it, including all of the cups and dishes that remained there since their breakfast.

Pinning the rug down instead of their table was a pair of people that Wylan had grown very fond of. Nina was wearing a loose fitting red dress that billowed out around her like a pool of blood, which stood starkly against the pale of her skin and the dark brown of her hair. Jesper was weaning one of his linen button-up shirts and a skirt that as the same color red as Nina’s dress. They were turned towards each other so that their foreheads were pressed together, their hands pulling at each other’s clothes like they were both bored. They were giggling and talking in voices quiet enough that Wylan couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.

He walked over to the loveseat, placing his hands down on the top of it. “Since when did we decide that we would be redecorating the living room?” he asked, trying to resist the grin that was spreading across his features. 

He loved the duo more than he knew how to say, even if his love for them was different. He loved Jesper, Matthias, and Kaz in a way that was deeply romantic and sexual. He loved Inej and Nina in a way that was just as passionate but also so starkly not romantic and clearly not sexual. He wanted to be close to them, to know their innermost workings. He wanted to hold hands and sit beside them, but he didn’t want to kiss them or have sex with them, even when he was having one of those days where he was craving that kind of intimacy.

As soon as he spoke, they sprang apart from each other. Nina climbed up onto one of the chairs as she worked some of the knots out of her long, curly brown hair. Jesper simply rose to his feet so that he was once again towering over the merchant. “Wy! You were gone before we woke up this morning, how did the meeting go?”

He was shocked at how quickly their demeanor had changed, but didn’t say anything about it even when Nina began to pull the couch back to where it belonged. He just told them about the tasks that he wasn’t looking forward to dealing with and the headache that was waiting for him at the end of his vacation. Whatever they were doing was their business, he wasn’t going to pretend like he understood what their love was like.

3.

Long trips wore all of them out, but Matthias always felt exhausted when they finally arrived at their destination. He had a lot of memories wrapped up in travel and he didn’t think that it was something that was ever going to go away. He had spent a lot of his childhood going on very small journeys with his mother when they were heading into town from their home out in the woods and with his father when he was learning how to hunt so that he could provide for his future family. Then when he was with the Druskelle, they had spent a lot of their time traveling between the Ice Court and whatever other training facility that it had been decided would be best for them. When he had actually graduated, he had traveled to every country under the sun and even a couple of others that seemed to be in only darkness so that he could look for the witches that they had been hunting back then.

Even when they were walking down the long, dusty paths so that they could stay with Jesper’s father over the Zemini’s winter holiday, he still ended up feeling like he was trudging through sludge by the time that they got to the cabin. It left him exhausted down to his bones, which made Kaz tease him that he was getting old despite them all being about the same age.

He managed to stay upright on his feet long enough to get all of their bags into the little back room that they were going to be sleeping in before he collapsed down onto his cot. He only managed a nap before the smell of dinner made him wake up. 

Jesper had made Zemini food for them back in Ketterdam fairly often since he was one of the two people in their entire polycule who knew how to cook and Nina liked to stick with baking. He always complained the that the spices and ingredients that they were able to get off the boats in Ketterdam were nothing compared to the fresh ones that he got back home. Now that they were actually in the country that the ingredients originated in, Matthias was excited to be able to try some of their favorites with the flavor that they were meant to have.

He hauled himself up from the cot and then blearily rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He was alerted to how nearly overheated he was when he stood up and his head began to swim. He removed the thick riding shirt that he was wearing so that he was in nothing but the loose cotton undershirt that he had donned back when they were in Shriftport. He was so used to the cold of Fjerda and then the nipping damp of Ketterdam that it actually astounded him that a place could be as warm as Novyi Zem was without the entire place being bleached white from the oppressive force of the sun.

Matthias walked out of the small room and then looked towards the kitchen where Jesper was. He smiled softly when he saw that his partner was dressed in nothing but a cotton undershirt as well, the sweat from standing over the stove having soaked through the garment so that it was clinging to his skin. It was reassuring to know that he wasn’t the only one that was suffering in the heat.

His cheeks turned red when he saw that Nina and Jesper were actually together, the others seemingly elsewhere on the farm. Matthias vaguely remembered something about Wylan and Inej wanting to see Kaz’s magic bird skills in action with the mean chickens that the Faheys owned. Nina was dressed in her slip and bloomers to beat the heat of the kitchen, but they were also clinging to her body with sweat.

Jesper turned around, singing a song in Zemini so softly that it was almost under his breath. Nina was singing along to it as her hands slowly traveled up his arms until they were resting on his shoulders. She threaded her fingers around the back of Jesper’s neck and brought their lips into a slow kiss. They were standing so close that their bodies were pressed together, though Matthias wasn’t quite sure how they were managing that in the heat.

He watched them dance, sharing kisses during the breaks of the song, for as long as he could manage before his stomach gave a loud grumble. The noise let them know that he was there and they sprang apart, both of them blushing furiously, though it might have just been the temperature from the outside combining with the steam raising from the pot on the stove.

“Matty, would you go outside and let the others know that dinner is ready? You’re the most dressed out of all of us and I need to get some of Ma’s old clothes for Nina since all she packed were things that would kill a polar bear in a Fjerdan winter,” Jesper said.

“It’s the winter in Ketterdam! How was I supposed to know that this was when Novyi Zem got hotter?” Nina asked, indignant but smiling. She brushed past Matthias after sharing a very brief kiss with him. He barely had time to say anything before he was being shepherded out of the door with a spoon that was covered in something that smelled absolutely heavenly.

4.

Nina knew that she was cutting it close. Despite what her partners thought, she was actually very good at time keeping. She had to be given that she had been a student during a time of war and had been to more classes than the rest of her peers combined so that she could learn all of the languages that were now familiar to her. She just didn’t care about time when it wasn’t something that was crucial to their survival or wasn’t going to give her something that she wanted.

Now was one of those times. She knew that if she pushed the time that she was supposed to meet up with Matthias the only thing that would be waiting for her would be a grumbling boyfriend who would be soothed with a bat of her eyelashes and a kiss or two. No one was going to die, no teachers were going to come after her, and she would only be a few minutes late at the very least.

So once she was finished tugging her bodice into place over her skirt, she took her time while getting her hair spooled onto the back of her head. She left one of the elaborate ringlets that decorated her head loose around her face so that it made the freckles on her cheeks and nose stand out. 

She figured that she had a bit of time left over after she finished getting dressed despite her late start, so she might as well go find one of her other boyfriends while she was at it. When she finally found him, he was sitting in his room in front of the workbench that he used to clean his guns and practice his Grisha abilities. “Hello, sweetheart,” she beamed as she knocked on the frame of the door to get his attention.

He jerked away from the project that he had been focused on and then beamed at her like she was the sun and moon combined together. “You look beautiful, darling,” he whispered as he reached a hand out towards her.

She stepped into his room and then took it, only to find that he used it to spin her around. He took in the full majesty of the outfit that she had chosen, his other hand grazing against her waist to keep her in the same spot in front of him. Then, he grasped her other hand so that her arms were crossed in front of her. Jesper used that to slip her into a hug, pressing their bodies directly into each other so that they were swaying to the music of their combined heartbeats. For a moment, Nina wished that she could still hear them.

“You’re going to have to let me take you to a dance sometime, especially in this dress,” he growled as he teasingly bit just underneath her jaw.

She giggled and tilted her head away from him so that he would have more space to work. “If we were going to a dance then I think I would wear something more svelte than this. Like that little black number that I got to accompany Wylan to that ball he really didn’t want to go to.”

Jesper moaned into the skin of her neck and she almost felt like she was dying. Wherever his hands were touching felt like they were on fire in a way that she couldn’t get enough of. It was just like the parem had made her feel, but healthier and beneficial to her. “I loved you in that dress.”

“Oh yeah? Show me,” she whispered when their noses were a hair’s breadth apart and she could already feel the arousal burning inside of him.

He didn’t wait even a second as he crashed their lips together in a burning kiss. Nina felt like he was trying to draw her soul out through her mouth and she was happy to let him do it. Their lips moved in perfect time with each other and his hands felt solid and grounding on her hips. His body was warm against her in a way that made butterflies shutter through her system so that she felt almost as though she was flying.

The entire world had melted away until they heard someone stop at the doorway, which caused them to fly away. “Am I really that late?” she asked as she looked to the perpetually broken clock hanging above Jesper’s wall.

“You are. I was worried, even though it looks like I did not need to be,” Matthias chuckled. She knew that it was good natured and there was no malice behind it, but she couldn’t help the shame that was burning in her cheeks at the words. She linked her arm through his and then began to ask him what he thought about her hair and her outfit while she led him back out into the street so that they could start their date.

5.

She let her feet carry her to the easy access points to the roofs of Ketterdam. Gliding from shingled roof to smokestack to flat industrial tents felt like coming home as much as the smell of the sea and bread baking in an oven did. Inej found her thoughts drifting while she traveled back to the home that she had made with her partners, showing her just how little she needed to pay attention to where she was going after all of the time that she had spent flitting over the tops of the city.

She landed on the balcony that led into the master bedroom that they all used when they were feeling up to sleeping with each other. When she noticed that no one was in there, she flipped over to Nina’s balcony. Her girlfriend had apparently recently taken to gardening, based on the geraniums and poppies that she had managed to coax into blooming in the same planter box along the outside of the balcony. Inej imagined that Jesper and Kaz, the duo that had the most previous experience when it came to growing things, had likely tried to tell her not to. Wylan had likely made some sort of special formula that made the ground more fertile so that her beloved blossoms wouldn’t wilt and die. Matthias had most definitely been the person to actually remember to water the flowers.

She smiled fondly as she thought about how desperately she wanted to see them all again. She turned towards the aforementioned woman’s room so that she could see if there was anyone that she could startle in there.

She saw two figures on top of the blankets, but the sky was just dark enough that she wasn’t to make them out properly through the warped glass. She pressed her hand flat against the window and then slipped it open so that she could wiggle her body silently through the opening, but she paused as soon as she had a clear view.

Inej could see a lot more clearly who it was and what they were doing. Jesper’s tall form had his head against the headboard and his toes just barely pressing against the baseboard of Nina’s bed. His entire bare back was on display for her to see, including the silvery white scars from their early time together in the Barrel. His arms were wrapped around a body that was shaped very differently than his. When he rolled over, she was able to see that it was Nina.

They were both totally in the nude but they had a blanket vaguely draped over their legs so that they could avoid the chill of the incoming spring night. Nina had her long hair vaguely tied back so that it was out of her face with the tie that Inej had given her out of the first rope that had snapped on her ship. Jesper had his arms draped lower over Nina’s hips so that he was vaguely holding onto her thighs. Nina was leaned forward so that her forehead was against his neck. Their entire fronts were pressed together in a way that told Inej that Jesper was inside of Nina.

She was expecting to hear moans and see movement, but the only thing that she heard was the sniffling and hiccuping that came with crying. They were still except for the fidgeting that came whenever Jesper wasn’t actively running away from something.

She felt oddly voyeuristic even though she had watched them do a lot of things that were far more dramatic than nude cuddling. So instead of continuing to spy on them, she placed her legs down on the inside of the windowsil so that her toes could brush against the floor. She then knocked on the wall next to her so that they were alerted to her presence.

They jumped and turned towards the sound, both of them obviously confused before the color drained from them both. They separated from each other and scrambled to get their clothes on. Nina was wearing her shift and a pair of bloomers by the time that Inej properly stepped into the room. 

“Inej, you’re back early!”

“I am,” she nodded. 

She opened her mouth to ask what they had been doing before she was interrupted by Jesper saying, “Have the others seen you yet or did you come to visit your favorites first?”

“I don’t have favorites,” she answered, forgetting what had been happening before despite them still getting their clothes back to rights.

+1

Jesper hated having to tell people about things that he was feeling. It was the one thing that made him a terrible boyfriend, outside of the inherent danger that his zowa abilities posed to his partners and his gambling addiction. Thinking about having to admit the reason that he and Nina had been so cagey about their affection with each other during the last six months made his stomach tie itself into an impossibly tight ball that he wasn’t sure he was ever going to get to come undone.

He knew that she was right, though. They had been walked in on when they were cuddling and touching each other more times than they could count and their partners were going to get suspicious. It was strange for them, since they were actually dating each other, to act like they were having an affair. They were dating the most dangerous and intelligent people in Ketterdam so there was no way that they were going to continue to get away with it. 

Nina threaded her fingers together with Jesper’s and then kissed his cheek to remind him that she was going to be by his side through the entire process. That gave him the strength to do what needed to be done, as being touched almost always did.

They headed down the hall and into the main living room where everyone else had already positioned themselves. Matthias and Kaz were discussing some business venture involving another disgraced Druskelle in the chairs. Wylan was stretched over the loveseat while drawing something. Inej was napping on the couch, but she woke up as soon as she heard the two new people walk into the room.

“What’s going on?” she asked, able to pick up on the tense body language from Jesper immediately.

The duo walked so that they were standing in front of the empty fireplace so that no one had to crane their heads or look behind themselves while they had their conversation. “We have to talk to you about something,” Jesper managed to get out before he felt his throat constrict with fear.

“It’s nothing bad,” Nina quickly explained. “It’s just something that we want to explain before it does turn into something bad.”

He nodded in agreement. He looked over his partners and felt suddenly very put on the spot when he noticed that all four pairs of eyes were glued directly onto him. Usually he liked it when everyone was paying attention to him because that fed that part of his ego that made him feel so good. Right now, though, it felt like he was in trouble.

“Nina and I like to cuddle,” he blurted, awkwardly.

“Treasure, we all like to cuddle each other,” Kaz said. “Inej and I slightly less often, sure, but that doesn’t mean that this is something that has never been done within the Crows.”

“That’s just it,” Jesper shook his head. “You have haphephobia, Inej has her trauma from the Menagerie, Matthias gets easily overstimulated by touch, and Wylan doesn’t like having too much of it because of what he went through when he was a kid. Nina and I don’t have any of that so whenever we need the long-lasting touch we go to each other so that we can get it from someone else that wants it.”

“I’m confused, I thought that was the whole point of us all dating each other?” Wylan asked as he set his pad of paper down onto the table next to him.

“I’m confused about you two liking to cuddle specifically. Every time someone else comes into the room you immediately focus on them instead,” Inej commented as she and Wylan shared a look with each other.

“That’s just it! We like cuddling but…” Nina shifted awkwardly as she looked up to Jesper. He gave her the same kind of reassuring smile that she had given to him before they had come into the living room to face the rest of their partners.

They paused for a while, letting the nerves in Jesper’s stomach settle out. “The reason that we’ve been acting so weird around each other is because we don’t want any of the rest of you to feel like you’re inadequate for us because you can’t handle as much touch as we need. We want to make sure that you all feel loved and appreciated without overwhelming you.”

The others were quiet for a long time, simply staring at their partners like the duo had grown an extra head that was keeping them attached at the shoulders. Then Kaz began to laugh behind his gloved hand, shaking his head like he was in utter disbelief despite the turmoil that the whole situation had caused his partners, “Ghezen and all that is Holy. You two are so sweet that you’re going to make my teeth fall out.”

Inej reached across the space with her foot so that she could kick the chair just enough to get him to jerk. She then turned back to the duo with a soft expression, “We really love the fact that you’ve found a way to soothe that facet of yourselves in a way that benefits everyone. Thank you for telling us so we don’t have to worry anymore.”

“I was beginning to worry, it was so strange the way that you were acting,” Wylan nodded in agreement. “I thought that maybe you were hiding some sort of secret Grisha club.”

Matthias gave a small shudder at that and then frowned when he no doubt began to correct his thoughts. None of the other partners plied into what he was thinking when they all began to go back to their own tasks. Nina and Jesper settled down on the rug in front of the hearth after they had moved the coffee table again, talking about their day. This time they were also given insight from Kaz and Wylan, who were now free to listen to them and watch them cuddling even if they weren’t up for the task.

[laughingmango]

1558w, complete, General Audiences, No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kamila & Sissel (Ghost Trick), Jowd & Sissel (Ghost Trick), Yomiel & Sissel (Ghost Trick) Characters: Sissel (Ghost Trick), Kamila (Ghost Trick), Jowd (Ghost Trick), Yomiel (Ghost Trick) Additional Tags: Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Christmas Presents, Video Game Mechanics, baby engineer at work, professional ghost at work

For @azurefishnets... last year! But what’s a backlog amirite. Now it’s seasonal again!

Kamila shook her head.

“Too bad you don’t get it, Sissel, do you? It would be fun to work on this together.”

Talking to the cat was a tried and true pastime whenever she got a technical break from the absolute concentration her projects required. In that cozy wintry afternoon, brandishing a plastic welder that would be heating up for next minute or so, Kamila looked at her cat, at the pieces of the soon-to-be noise-cancelling earrings spread out on the table, at her apple tea in her favorite mug which had gone cold thirty minutes earlier but everybody knew that it was the thought that counted and that tea was more of a state of mind anyway, and felt at peace with the world.

Sissel could not quite say the same. What didn’t he get? Couldn’t he? He walked onto the table, feigning nonchalance as only a cat (or a ghost) could do, watching her solder three blue plastic rings and fasten them to an earrings base on one side and to a short chain on the other. At the other end of the chain were the blue silicone bits Alma put in her ears at night, the ones Sissel was not allowed to play with. The look of the plastic rings matched that of the silicone plugs – not the same, but they looked good together, as if they were always meant to be part of the same item. Sissel meowed: he got that much. Kamila set down the rings for a moment and sneaked him a scratch on the back, but did not seem to care for a follow-up to her statement.

The earrings were not the only item on the table. A small crawler robot retrofitted from one of Kamila’s early competitions was waiting for the finishing touches – its flashy new red coating was taking entirely too much to dry, as resin coatings are wont to do, and a bottle of ketchup stood next to it. Sissel slipped into the ghost world to paw at the bizarre contraption, still wondering. He understood soldering, he understood knitting, he knew it was bad when acrylics dripped out of their bottles. He understood checkers and had a beginner’s grasp on chess, and knew how to play mean card tricks with a small human help, so all in all, there was no reason to cut him out of the afternoon’s entertainment. He found the knack that made the little robot start and gave it a little ghostly push, out of boredom and contrarianism.

The robot grabbed the ketchup, surveyed the table, found what looked like a dish and was about to squeeze the condiment on Kamila’s tools when she reached for the off button.

“Sissel, no!” she snorted. “Not like that!”

She never could figure out how the cat pulled these pranks, and as a prospective scientist it stung like a personal failure. Still, as a prospective scientist, she had come to the irrefutable conclusion that it was none other than the cat who did it, and it felt like their little secret, and a bit of magic that brought a strange joy to her rigorous world.

“You silly kitten, you know you are my favorite tester in the whole wide world.” She fastened the welder to its holder and gave Sissel her undivided attention. “And I know you are very, very smart.” That netted her some understated purring that may or may not have been intended as a demure agreement. “And that you understand at least half of what I’m saying. The other half is the stuff you don’t want to hear so that doesn’t count.” Busted.

“But these are the presents I am making for my mom and dad, Sissy. We don’t know who your mom and dad are, so we can’t bring them presents!”

Kamila ran a hand through his cold fur, giving her full consideration to the scenario she had only evoked in a burst of mindless musing. “...or should we bring cat treats to the park next week? Maybe they’re still there and I would not want to be rude. I am very grateful to have you, you know.”

Was that all? Sissel headbutted her wrist when he grew tired of pretending to have a heartbeat and breathe, moving away to the other end of the table and staring at her with bright unblinking eyes.

Humans did love to overcomplicate things, really.

Yet that thought, or part of it, remained appealing.

So he set out to work.

It so happened that Jowd shared many traits with the quintessential cat. This was not always a help to Sissel, who had taken to spending most of his time among humans and sometimes felt like he missed out on the finer complexities of both species. It was, however, enough for him to know, deeply and intimately, that the way the detective went on and on about his upcoming work trip overseas was a desperate caterwauling, a call for help. He was so offended by the sheer fact of being expected to hold a speech at some conference that he neglected to share any details about it, or Sissel wasn’t paying attention on the rare occasions when he did, but what was clear was that the sole thought of leaving felt like torture.

Sissel, then, played a waiting game. He would need a stage for his trick: the right moment had to present itself at the police station, among a crowd of Jowd’s colleagues.

It rained; McCaw walked into the atrium and threw the wet plastic wrapping of a snack into the nearby trashcan. Sissel closed the lid when nobody was watching, letting the plastic fall toward the ground; a well-timed loosening of the radiator’s valve blew it away from the trashcan and close to Jowd’s feet. Now – and this was crucial to Sissel’s plans – Jowd had good eyes and lightning-quick reflexes. He would see the perilous transparent slip of plastic and sidestep to avoid it, even gaining a modicum of admiration from the bystanders. It would only garner more sympathy for his plight, then, when an improbable chain of events that began in the dusty spaces above the cupboards made a bowling ball fall on the desk next to where he’d landed, triggering the drawers’ spring-loaded latches at once and throwing all three drawers at Jowd’s calf with considerable strength. The man yowled in pain as he fell over and squinted at the last movement of this drawers disaster: a sheet of wrapping paper and a ribbon somehow flew out of them only to land exactly on his shoulder.

“Doctor’s gonna order some rest for this. You are welcome,” he said through the ghost world. Jowd’s laughter almost tore down the place and so Sissel congratulated himself upon a job well done: his dad had gotten his present.

His other dad would turn out to be a more complicated affair.

Not that anyone else in all his extended families had any claim to the title of “uncomplicated”, ever, but Yomiel remained the uncontested champion in the opposite direction and so Sissel tailed him for a few days, in and out of the ghost world, waiting for inspiration to strike. Yomiel’s new life needed… a dishwasher, a subscription to at least three computer magazines, a book called “Cooking for newbs” (spelling uncertain), a substantial supply of hair gel, a cat-shaped ladle and a cat-printed tie, Sissel learned, none of which were things a ghost cat could provide, unless a ghost cat felt like stooping to ghost crimes.

Rain again. It was a dark and stormy afternoon when Yomiel grabbed an umbrella and got ready to make a run to the convenience store down the corner; Sissel duly followed him inside the umbrella itself. They coasted a pile of junk discarded next to the wall of an abandoned building – broken chairs, a desk, file cabinets, cardboard boxes littered the sidewalk. Nothing special, nothing new. If not for his ghost senses, Sissel would have never given it a second thought. But that presence was there, undoubtedly. So Sissel jumped out of the umbrella and into a fire hydrant, and from there he frantically looked for the control unit of the nearest street lamp.

Sunlight was fading, and the city would soon bask in in its warm artificial lights, but that one street lamp lit up ahead of time to shine a spotlight on the pile of cardboard boxes. Yomiel raised an eyebrow under his shades. The street lamp went out and lit up again. Yomiel shot it a pointed look and approached the boxes underneath.

As he moved one of them aside, a kitten meowed at him, red fur darkened by the relentless rain. It was lost and hungry and had the biggest, roundest paws; Yomiel teared up as he tried to hold it and felt it hold him in turn. He cradled the kitten close to his chest and greeted it with his warmest, most private smile.

The whole street lit up.

“I know it was you, Sissel,” Yomiel whispered to the empty boxes. “You could’ve just told me! Who’s givin’ ya this knack for theatrics?”

“Statistically, you.”

“As if. I’m onto you. But… thank you, my friend.”

“...you are welcome. Just don’t name it after me, will you? Try to break the streak?”

“I’m not making any promises.”

[libraryofloveletters]

Garvez family hcs cause why not :) 

Two kiddos was a handful for these two, but they weren't opposed to have more in the future

Last names were Garcia-Alvez 

Penelope made her point that she carried them for nine months, her name is going to be there 

Luke knew better than to argue with her, he didn’t mind tho (he knew she was right) 

Their daughter loved Luke, she was literally attached to his hip 

Their son was a big time momma’s boy 

Penelope and their daughter butt heads all the time, she was a teenager now (like 16-17) and literally Penelope’s twin

whenever they couldn't agree on something, Penelope would send her to her father to ask him (if she needed permission to go out or if she wanted to pierce something or maybe get a tattoo ?) and obviously he’d say yes 🙄 he could never say no to her 

Penelope would freak out at first if she dyed her hair blue

Penny’s screaming at the top of her lungs “who let you do that!!!” (again, Luke gave her permission, but it was more like he saw her with the hair dye, asked what she was doing and just said okay and walked away👨🏽‍🦯) 

Half an hour later “oh I actually like the blue on you” 

Their son was 11, he was in that stage where he felt like he was a grown up but he was still a baby to Luke and Penelope

Their son would come in with huge dragon drawn on his arm 

“What's that ?” Penelope asks him, she always encouraged him to express himself 

“a drawing like what sissy has” 

Luke and Penelope are both confused until they put two and two together, realizing that their daughter has a tattoo, didn't tell then but their son noticed 

Needless to say, the kids fought for 2 weeks straight after that 

To say their daughter was pissed that her brother ratted her out 

their son would be so sad that his sister was mad at him, he sat there like 🥺🥺🥺 I don't want her to be mad at me 

eventually she forgave him, but they didn’t tell their parents 

they just come home to see their kiddos cuddled up on the couch watching tv 

Penelope is like oh my babies 🥺🥺 

Luke’s like yeah I knew it 😌

[breanime]

7. I told you that I’d never leave you,I’m not going anywhere. With Billy Russo please

*gif not mine*

“Daddy, I’m scared,” your son stood behind Billy’s leg, looking up at the building with wide eyes.

You stood beside Billy, holding your crying daughter. “Sweetheart, we talked about this…” You said to him, patting your daughter’s back.

Your son sniffled, and you knew Billy was probably a few moments away from having a breakdown himself. “Daddy…” He said, looking up at Billy.

Billy glanced over at you, and you nodded. He could do this.

Carefully, Billy knelt down in front of your son. “I know you’re scared, son, but it’s okay. You got this.”

“What if no one likes me?”

“They’ll like you,” Billy assured him, smiling softly, “and do you know why they’ll like you?” Your son shook his head, his dark eyes wide. “They’ll like you because you’re a nice kid. You’re smart, and funny, and sweet and kind; they’d be idiots not to like a kid like you.”

“What if I mess up?”

“Everyone messes up now and again,” Billy said back, “there’s no shame in that. As long as you try your best, you know Mommy and I will be proud.”

“But… But…” His little chin wobbled, and Billy pulled him to his chest, hugging him as he spoke. “But I’m gonna be all alone up there…”

Billy looked up at you, frowning. Tonight was the night of the preschool graduation, and your son was supposed to go on stage, receive his diploma, and give a speech (five sentences he wrote and rehearsed all week) to the audience because he’d been voted the “class president” of the Kangaroo Room. Your baby girl was sick and fussy, and you hadn’t gotten a good nights sleep in at least a week. Frank, Karen, and Curtis were already in the building, holding your seats (because who was going to tell that trio to move their coats?). Billy looked down at his watch; the ceremony would be starting in 15 minutes.

“I don’t want to be alone…” Your son whimpered.

Billy put a hand on his little face and smiled. “You won’t be. Do you remember what I told you on the first day of school when I dropped you off?”

“If someone messes with me, go for the throat?” He asked, tilting his head to the side.

Billy heard you click your tongue, and he cleared his throat. “That was supposed to stay between us…”

“Until Sissy goes to school,” your son said brightly.

“What was the other thing I said,” Billy prompted him, “When you didn’t want to go in and you were afraid you would get lost?”

Your son looked up at his father, his eyes steady and clear now. “You said that you wouldn’t leave me alone.”

Billy nodded. “That’s right. I told you that I’d never leave you,” he reminded him, “I’m not going anywhere. And I meant it.” He stood up and held out his hand. “So how about you and me go together?”

Billy glanced at you before looking back down at your son, and he saw the same wide smile on his face that was just on yours.

A little over 20 minutes later, you sat between Frank and Curtis with a sleeping baby in your lap and your phone in your hand, watching proudly as your son walked across the stage—holding hands with Billy. There were more than a few “awwwwws” as your husband walked with your son, both of them wearing a white button up and black slacks (Billy with a black tie and your son with a purple bow tie). You teared up when they handed your son his colorful diploma, and he looked up and showed it to Billy, both of them grinning from ear to ear.

Billy held his hand and stood with him the whole time, smiling down at him proudly as he delivered his speech perfectly.

“…And before I sit down, I want to thank my Mommy for helping me with all my letters and numbers and for teaching me how come red and pink are different, and my Uncle Frankie for showing me how to make grenades out of construction paper,” the crowds laughed at that, and Karen covered her face, embarrassed and touched, “and for all the times my Uncle Curtis let me and my Sissy draw on his leg. But mostly I want to thank my Daddy for being the bestest Daddy in the whole world.” He looked up at Billy with nothing but love and admiration on his little face. “I love you, Daddy.”

You were definitely crying now—and from the sound of the crowd, you weren’t the only one—you watched through teary eyes as Billy bent down and hugged your son, and the crowd applauded.

Later, Frank and Karen took your daughter home to rest while you and Billy took your son out to eat. He showed his diploma to the waitress and got a free piece of cake and a modified birthday song from the whole staff. He sat between you and Billy, talking excitedly and asking 100 questions about what kindergarten would be like, and whenever you looked over at your husband, he was smiling—and so was your son.

Billy kept his promise to your son—and later your daughter—for the rest of their lives. You got to watch him become a better father each and every day, and a better husband as well.

You truly were one lucky woman.

*******************************************************************************************

Anyone know the significance of that last line? I bet you do! Thanks for reading!

Everything Taglist: @encounterthepast @jigsawlover10 @gollyderek @charlylama @realduckvader @teacuplotus @whovianayesha  @lexxierave @loveintheroyalfamily  @fanfictionrecommendations-com  @maxslime-blog @songforhema @lucielandss @themadhatter92  @the-blind-assassin-12 @christinawxxx @anabella-baby @blackcoffeeandgreenteaforme @luminex3 @ashkuuuu @luckysstrikes @carlaangel86 @floralpeaceofmind @dylanobrusso @iaintnofurry  @ymariejp @its-my-little-dumpster-fire @mrsjaxtellerfan @holamor @drinix @rhabakoli @stories-you-wont-hear @king4thesirens @leahnicole1219 @evanlys19  @binbons-is-theloml @aikeia

Benny B Taglist: @suchatinyinfinity @fandomlifeandeverythingelse @starkrobb @something-tofightfor @elanor-of-imladris @thesumofmychoices @marauderskeeper  @honeyydippaa  @thebabblingbookworm @khuangpu13 @ladyblablabla @woodlandreads  @ms-delos @belladonnarey @thesandbeneathmytoes

Benny B Taglist (minus Sirius): @banditthewriter

[chibimyumi]

Furutod vs Sebastyun

Dear @gisellehexen89,

First of all, I am very happy you seem to be enjoying my blog! And thank you for the interesting ask.

I think the best way to find out what ‘Elisabeth’ is is to read up on it, or watch it yourself; it is impossible to explain everything in a post. After having learned what the musical is about, and you’re interested in how TOHO staged it in 2019, I recommend reading my full art reports:【ACT 1】 and 【ACT 2】. These two reports also show my general thoughts on Sissi (^ω^)

Now instead, I shall dedicate this post to making a comparison between Furutod and Sebastyun.

Furutod vs Sebastyun

When Furukawa’s role as Der Tod was initially announced, most people believed he would be very similar to Sebastian. It is an easy trap: both characters are non-human, have very little scruples, are fiercely attractive, and the theme of obsession is omnipresent.

But honestly, that’s it. That’s all the similarities these two share.

1. Status

The biggest difference between Furutod and Sebastyun is their status. Furutod is the Lord of the Underworld (黄泉の帝王), and absolute authority over life and death of all that is alive. Sebastian meanwhile, is bound to servitude who cannot even wield full autonomy of his own. Needless to say, their difference in power status decides everything in their respective behaviours.

1.1. Sebastian

Let us look at Sebastyun first. All three Kuromyus from the Furukawa era show very clearly that Sebastian is very limited in many fields, but the difference between the ‘mask of the butler’ vs ‘the raving demon’ is clearest in ‘Tango on the Campania’.

In the scene with Edward, we see the boy pulling rank on ‘a mere butler’. Edward was basically threatening O!Ciel using Sebastian, while hiding behind the face of ‘a loving brother’. There was nothing Sebastian could do as a mere servant, so he very explicitly checks first whether Edward had left, before he could show his true reaction: “whatever.”

In the cinematic record too, Sebastyun clearly disagreed with what his master demanded of him, and he only showed his BIG ATTITUDE after the boy had left.

Likewise, as explained in this post, because Sebastian is always bound to servitude, his autonomy (or whatever little he has) is something he treasures a lot. His only outlet of freedom is being pedantic and obtuse. Sebastyun takes it a step further by being passive-aggressive on top, a trait Furukawa has made his Sebastian famous for.

Obviously Sebastyun sees fun in doing so, but this is undeniably the result of a long history of getting his autonomy denied. He is the servant in the shadows who needs to wield power within other people’s boundaries.

1.2. Der Tod

As I mentioned above, Der Tod is the Lord of the Underworld, and as Furukawa himself interprets, represents the authority over both life and death. He never has to ask for a ‘yes’, other people’s consent or opinions are non-consequential to him. He takes lives because he can, and nobody can punish him for it.

Being an existence who never needs to learn accepting a ‘no’, he does not need to put up a face, because he never needs to make compromises. Der Tod is SO used to getting his way, that teasing the possibility of ‘not getting his way’ is even a game to him.

1.3. Comparison

Sure, Sebastian also teases and pushes his limits sometimes, but unlike Der Tod, Sebastian does have to consider having to reap what he sows. If Sebastian fails and breaks his contract, surely something terrible awaits him. But Der Tod? Nah... his Death Angels will clean up his mess.

Der Tod can afford to make mistakes in playing with his prey, unlike Sebastian. In The Last Dance↑, we see Furutod make the biggest miscalculation; scaring Elisabeth. Had he not scared her, then Elisabeth might have been quicker in agreeing to die for him.

Unlike Der Tod who has minions to clean up his mess, Sebastyun does need to make careful calculations.

2. Understanding and Interest

Another major difference between Der Tod and Sebastian is their understanding of and interest in human beings.

2.1. Sebastian

The thing Sebastian keeps saying is how interesting humans are; Sebastyun is the scientist always hungry for more knowledge, and humans fascinate him to no end. In ‘Tango on the Campania’ even with debilitating pain, he was smiling with the excitement at human behaviour.

He also makes use of whatever knowledge he has acquired throughout his centuries on earth to get what he wants or needs. Like I said above, at some point in history Sebastyun learned that fear would cause a human to shut down, so he was careful in not scaring Beast, lest she might not open up to him.

Had Sebas been a bit of a dumb-dumb and scared Beast the way he did in the manga, or the way Der Tod scared Elisabeth, then he would have failed his mission logically speaking.

2.2 Der Tod

Der Tod in contrast, always gets his way, so he does not need to understand humans to achieve anything. But more importantly, he is superbly uninterested in understanding humans. The only reason he shows interest in humans is for himself; he wants to bend humans to flatter his own ego. “If Elisabeth finally begs to die, then I AM the victor. If Rudolf commits suicide, then I manipulated him.” Der Tod’s satisfaction is the goal of his actions.

As such, when Rudolf ‘HAD THE AUDACITY to bore LORD DEATH’, he bitchslapped him before taking his life. When in the end Furutod did get Elisabeth, but not in a satisfactory way that assured his baby ego that he’s the winner, he was disappointed and lost all vitality.

To Sebastyun however, the satisfaction is a bonus: it’s nice to have, but it’s more important to get a job done.

3. Mannerism

Another point of difference is their mannerisms. Sebastian is a mere servant, and therefore needs to keep to the shadows. He usually tries (though fails) to adhere to the Victorian code of ‘servants should be like furniture, speak only when spoken to’. (In truth, Sebastian talks way too much for a proper Victorian servant, but he tries! He tries. Give the butler some cookies for trying.)

Der Tod meanwhile, is the supreme overlord of all and everything, so he does not need to care about anything. Plus, he can turn invisible as he likes. Unlike Sebastyun who needs to suppress his laughter or any other commentaries, Furutod can get away with laughing like a f*cking hyena on crack during an Imperial wedding.

4. Ego

Lastly, another stark difference between Sebastian and Der Tod is their ego and their presentation of themselves.

4.1. Sebastian

In this post I explained how Sebastian is very willing to humble himself, to come in second place, or take whatever disadvantage voluntarily for the sake of achieving something he wants or needs to.

This is because Sebastian is very secure about himself, and the recognition of humans (cattle) means nothing to him. He does not need anybody to know how powerful he is, instead he takes greater pleasure in silently manipulating others, using humans’ own actions against themselves.

Yes, Sebastian does love to flex, but he does not do any of those things to increase his reputation. We can tell from Sebastian never lingering to check people’s oohs and aahs. It’s like how when we impress a toddler with something easy, we usually won’t indulge in the kid’s praise because we don’t feel an increase of social regard. Instead, the fact that the toddler is impressed with something so easy is more interesting to us.

Sebastian’s flexing seems more like an outlet because O!Ciel forbade him from showing his true potential, and it is frustrating to him. It is just like how we as (young) adults we are capable of understanding deep analyses, but get constantly told to read picture books, on top of also having be content with hearing: “how amazing, you can read a picture book! You are astonishing!!😱”

4.2. Der Tod

If Der Tod was not explicitly ‘death’ personified, I would say that Furutod is ‘huge ego and diva complex’ personified.

Despite being a more elevated being than Sebastian (the scavenger demon) is as Lord of the Underworld, Furutod does like being praised. Der Tod is and will always be above human beings, and that is as boring a fact as water being wet. As I explained in Art report act 1, Furutod suffers from ‘lethal apathy’, and in this sense he needs more than to know ‘that mortals are beneath him, that water is wet’. Furutod wants to know that the mortals fear him, and gets a kink out of mortals being on their knees for him. Der Tod is not just ‘death’, he is the personification of ‘human regard of death’; and the fear of death, is what unifies human kind, after all.

Another point in stark contrast with Sebastian is that Furutod does have kin near him: the Death Angels. The regard of mortals is nice, but he also likes keeping his minions impressed, because his kin’s reverence also means something to him. It is almost like Furutod wants to justify why he should be superiour to the Death Angels (even though his position is never challenged). He just gets a REALLY big kink out of praise, okay? ( ´艸｀)

Furutod’s enormous ego also shows itself in his diva-ness. When he is courting Elisabeth for example, he is basically behaving like a peacock. He takes Elisabeth’s hand and runs it through his silver hair, his ivory silken skin. “Look at me, feel me, human, I am SO drop dead gorgeous.”

Furutod also can’t handle being lower than anyone; whenever he has the chance he will literally place himself on higher footing.

Contrast this to Sebastyun who is always very willing to put himself lower than others. This ⇊ would be UNTHINKABLE for Furutod.

5. Conclusion

In conclusion, besides the ‘non-human character in a dark theme’ aspect, Sebastyun and Furutod really don‘t have anything in common.

5.1. Sebastian

The fact that Sebastyun is always bound to servitude whenever he is on Earth, and his lack of autonomy, shape his behaviour. His reputation on Earth has no meaning to him; Sebastyun is confident about what kind of Demon he is, and the opinions of ‘cattle’ are therefore insignificant to him. The only thing one must not challenge is whatever little autonomy he has left, and he will test and find the upper limit to wield it.

5.2. Der Tod

Furutod in contrast, only knows what it is like to be the most superiour being and never getting his authority challenged. He never had to learn to make compromises, nor does he ever have to deal with consequences. As such he is really a foot-stamping-toddler (Foot-stamping Der Toddler? Sorry.) with a toxic superiority complex and too much power.

Furutod’s supremacy is mind-numbingly boring to him, but there is no way to achieve something grander than what is already grandest. He is trapped in his own mind of toxic superiority and boredom, and will live the rest of eternity searching for entertainment. (It is kind of sad if you think about it......wait, I’m feeling bad for Der Tod? Hmm Furukawa, you really did add a whole new page to the history of ‘Elisabeth - das Musical’)

In short: where Furutod is eternally bored and has no prospect of getting sustainable entertainment, Sebastyun will always have something interesting he might run into.

[gvbejvmes]

Task: Adjective

Title: Artistic Rating: PG-13 Characters: Gabriel James-Michaels, Francis James, Nancy Conrad/James/Scott, Georgiana James Adams, Cesar “Flaco” Rodriguez, Bella James, Jonathan James-Michaels, Other family referenced Pairings: Implied Gabriel James/Nancy Conrad, Gabriel James-Michaels Warnings: The usual Francis James warnings for child abuse/endangerment and homophobia. Summary: 5 times someone saw the artistic side of Gabriel, and 1 time he saw himself as artistic. 

Artistic [ahr-tis-tik], adj: 1) conforming to the standards of art; satisfying aesthetic requirements, 2) showing skill or excellence in execution, 3) exhibiting an involvement in or appreciation of art, especially the fine arts, 4) of art or artists, 5) of, like, or thought of as characteristic of an artist.

1980

This was the last place in the world Francis James wanted to be. Needing to close the store early to go to the elementary school was pretty low down on his list of priorities, but it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter. The school had insisted on this parent/teacher conference, and there was no way in hell Maria was going. She was pregnant and had a two year old to take care of; home was where she belonged. Besides, if he sent Maria to this meeting, she was likely to miss something important. His wife was an above average homemaker, but she wasn’t the sharpest tool in the shed. This was something he needed to do, and if it was important, he’d tell Maria about it later. 

“Gabriel is a very special boy.” The kindergarten teacher began. She’d told him her name at some point, but Francis couldn’t be bothered to remember it. Anyone who taught kindergarten wasn’t a real teacher anyway; they were a glorified babysitter. He didn’t like the way she talked about his son. Sure, his son was a bit on the special side, his bizarre relationship with his sister being a contributing factor, but who was this woman, this stranger to call his son special? He knew what that meant from the way she phrased it. 

When it was clear she wasn’t able to figure out what to say next, Francis decided to take pity on her. “Are you trying to tell me that my boy’s r***rded?” That wasn’t something Francis would have guessed. He was a bit of a sissy, but that was his mother’s doing. She babied him and allowed him to get away with bullshit like playing with her make up. It was behavior that could be corrected with a good belt. He wouldn’t consider being a pansy the same as being a r***rd. 

The teacher seemed flustered all of a sudden. “No! I didn’t mean special like that Mr. James.” She tried to soothe over, looking as out of place as Frances felt. “What I should have said was that Gabriel sees the world differently than the other students in my class.” The teacher continued on before pulling out a couple of what he assumed were his son’s drawings. 

One of them was a coloring sheet with the outline of an apple. It was only half-filled, the color only filling the edges. The other drawing was black crayon with white circles pressed into it. 

“Gabriel hasn’t been able to complete a single one of our art assignments. And when it’s time for art to finish, he refuses to stop. This piece-” She gestured to the apple. “Took the entirety of art. When I asked him why he didn’t finish coloring it in, he told me that apples are many colors and that he was trying to get the reds just right. And this one-” She gestured to the black drawing. “Was supposed to be a star. We were practicing our shapes, but he didn’t want to draw a ‘fake’ star. He only wanted to draw what they really looked like. Mr. James, have you thought perhaps about homeschooling Gabriel? There are plenty of art classes where his talents will be fostered.”

And there it was again. This art bullshit. It was the constant scribbling and coloring he insisted on doing. Boys weren’t supposed to be artistic. They were supposed to be strong and masculine. His son was supposed to be playing sports and playing in the mud. This shit was not what little boys were supposed to do. 

“I’ll take care of Gabriel.” Francis promised. “Don’t worry about him.”

1990

“Is it just me or did Gabriel James get hot over the summer?” It was the first day of school and Nancy Conrad was taking inventory of how summer treated everyone. If she wanted to continue to give the senior girls a run for their money, she needed to know everything about everyone in the junior class. There were a couple of girls she needed to keep an eye out for. Girls who left sophomore year with no boobs and who were entering junior year with boobs. There was a chance they could try to compete with her, and she was not going to allow that to happen. 

She leaned against the bank of lockers as Rachel Gilroy stuck pictures up. To their right, Tiffany Owens leaned against the lockers as she filed her nails. These were her girls. They made the cheerleading team together, and next year they would absolutely be the girls ruling that squad. There was no one Nancy trusted more in the world than Rachel and Tiffany. They’d been friends since they were kids and would continue to be friends; Nancy just knew it.

Tiffany made a dismissive sound. “I think you’re barking up the wrong tree there, Nanc. I don’t think you’re his type.” She continued shaping her nail for a moment, but Nancy was convinced that Tiffany was just leaving her to stew. “I sat next to him in English. He’s… artistic. He spent the whole time doodling.”

Rachel closed her locker and shot Tiffany a confused look. “What’s wrong with that? I doodle in my English notebook, too.” And it was more or less along the lines of what Nancy was thinking.

The sound of the nail file stopped, and Tiffany looked at both of them. She looked frustrated, like Nancy and Rachel weren’t getting what she was trying to say. “No, I mean he’s artistic. You know, like… artistic.” When it became very clear that Nancy and Rachel still didn’t understand, Tiffany rolled her eyes. “I think he’s a f*g.” 

Nancy froze. She’d never met anyone who was gay before, but she’d seen movies. She knew what gay was supposed to look like, but Gabriel didn’t fit that stereotype. He was hot, and he played Varsity baseball. If Tiffany thought he was gay, well, then, maybe that wasn’t a friend she needed in her life after all. 

“I bet you he’s not.” She smirked at her friend. “I can guarantee that by the time I’m through with him, there won’t be an artistic bone in his body left.” 

2000

There was something about watching G paint that had always been mesmerizing to Georgie. It was like he went off to another place every time. The new No Doubt CD echoed throughout the garage as G knelt on the ground, pouring melted crayon onto a canvas. He worked quickly, moving the colors around before they set. When a color set too soon, he would stop, hold his lighter over the spot, and move the wax around until it did what he wanted. He was so focused when he worked, and it was like watching someone dance with the way his arms moved about the canvas.

CJ was hitched up on her hip, watching as her dad worked. The toddler was quiet, watching G with the same intensity as she watched Beauty and the Beast with her sister. They were supposed to be calling him in for lunch, but it was hard to interrupt him when he was in the zone like this. A part of Georgie couldn’t help but to wonder if this was how people felt when they watched Picasso or Michelangelo work. Her brother was going to be a big name one day. She just knew it. With his talent, he deserved so much more than the life he’d been given.

“Are you guys just going to hover or did you want to see what I’m working on?” And G always did seem to know where his kids were whenever they were in the same room. He always seemed to know where Georgie was, too, but she pushed that thought aside and instead brought her niece closer to where her brother was working.

She blinked as she finally was able to get a better look at what he was working on. It wasn’t a canvas like she had thought. It looked like he was using the easel DJ had broken last week as a canvas. He’d sanded it down and it was the easel that he was pouring the paint onto. She’d never seen anything like it before, and she swore one of the figures he was creating almost looked like -

“Aunt G, it’s you!” CJ screamed out in absolute delight. She touched the melted crayon, and G let her, using his daughter’s pudgy fingers to pat down the wax just right. “Daddy, you draw me, too?”

G laughed as he put his tools off to the side. “Not today, princess. Another time.” He promised before scooping CJ out of Georgie’s arms. “Is it time for lunch?”

CJ nodded. “YES! Grilled cheeses!” And she announced it like it was the best food ever.

As they retreated back into the house, Georgie continued to stare at the painting. Her fingers lightly traced the outline of her own face. She would never understand the language her brothers seemed to be able to speak - Eli with his machines and G with his ability to turn normal objects into, well, this. She didn’t understand how they could just look at something and know what it could be. It wasn’t a skill she had been gifted like them.

“You’re not supposed to touch art, you know.” G drawled from where he was leaning against the doorjamb, CJ no longer in sight. “Do you like it?” He asked softly as he wandered back over to the painting. Next to the figure of Georgie, another figure was in the early stages of being sketched out. 

She nodded slowly, her fingers never leaving the canvas. “You see me differently than I see me.” Georgie’s voice was soft. “You see something feminine and I see something that’s not.”

G’s hand slipped into hers. “Georgie…” He started out, but she shook her head - stopping him.

“I know what you’re going to say. It’s the same damn thing the doctor said, and D said. Being infertile doesn’t make me any less of a woman. Yeah, yeah yeah.” She huffed out a harsh breath. “Men can procreate. Even Satan herself can have kids and I’m just… broken.”

It was quiet. G was either waiting for her to say something or he just didn’t know what to say. With him, it could be either. She couldn’t always read him.

“Who are you going to put here?” She slipped her hand out of her brother’s and instead stepped even closer to the drawing, trying to make out what his stray marks meant. The bodies looked like they were coming from the same crayon, from the same body. Like they were born the same. “Not D.”

G shrugged. “I haven’t really planned that far ahead. I’m just letting it happen.” 

Georgie nodded. “That explains all the marks. You’ve always hated painting yourself. This is how you see me, right?” She took a step back. “Paint you like I see you.”

2010

“I don’t get it, man.” Of all the places Cesar had wanted to go while he was in New York, the MET had not been on his list of priority sites. He wanted to go to all the baseball stadiums near the city, and to Coney Island, and to Ellis Island, but a museum hadn’t been on his list of places he wanted to go. Hell, he wouldn’t have even known about the MET if Michaels hadn’t told him about it. It had taken a lot of pushing to get James to bring him to the MET, and when he did it was kind of scary. The staff acted almost like they were afraid of him, and they roped off the section of the museum Cesar had wanted to see .And it wasn’t like James was being a bitch. He was nice; they just knew who he was and wanted to be accommodating. It was insane. 

There were other pieces in the room they were in, but not many. Cesar’s only focus was on the metal structure in the center of the room anyway. He walked around the cage, a replica of the cell they’d shared when they’d been incarcerated. “Why would you want to be reminded of that shit? The second I was out, I pretended like it never happened.” Sure, his wife brought it up from time to time when he was bugging her too much, but he didn’t give prison a second thought. 

James pushed on a bar which gave way, allowing for Cesar to climb inside. “Lay down. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll get in there with you and we can pretend it’s old times.” He sounded sarcastic about it, but Cesar knew it was a real offer.

As soon as he laid down and looked up at the ceiling, he couldn’t help but to stare. He’d slept on the top bunk and had spent many nights counting the cracks in the cement. This was definitely an upgrade. The way James had painted it, he felt like he was outside. Not laying in a replica of a cell he’d once shared. “James… Hot damn.”

The other man laughed, and squatted down to his level. He didn’t crawl into the cell with him, but Cesar figured it would always be more difficult for James than it was for him. “It’s not about remembering where we were, Flaco. It’s about seeing the possibility - even in the worst places.”

He didn’t know if it was what he said or if it was how he said it. All he knew was that it had him laughing his ass off. “I thought you were gay in LA. Dude, New York has made you extra gay.” He managed out between laughs.

“Guess I’m not showing you where Dodgers stadium used to be then. No Ebbets Field for you.” James managed out, pulling a face.

Cesar scrambled out of the cage, still laughing. “Don’t you dare. It’s the Mecca man. Holy ground. I need to take some dirt back to Mama.” He said, before sobering up. “James… how come you didn’t want me to know that you made it? You’re a fixture at a world famous museum. Why aren’t you screaming it from the Empire State?” 

His friend shrugged. “It just happened. It’s not a big deal.” But he could tell from his face that it was definitely a big deal.

“We are very different people.” Cesar said with a shake of his head. “Very different people.” 

2020

Bella James mostly liked going to school. She liked the days she got to go to art school with GG best. Even if he was the teacher and she had to share him with the class. Regular school was okay, too. She guessed. They got to play a lot and sing. She liked to sing. It reminded her of Mommy. And it was the same as her cousins. And sometimes they did art too. She didn’t like that art as much. It wasn’t as fun as GG’s art. The teachers didn’t like when she said that though.

Today was a day they had art, and she was coloring and coloring. Daddy’s Day was coming up and they were supposed to draw a picture of their daddies for a present. She didn’t have a Daddy to draw anymore, but she had a GG. And his real name was Dad so he definitely counted as a Daddy. 

The white piece of construction paper sitting in front of her was perfect for what she wanted to do. She picked up a blue crayon and started coloring. She tried to do big swooshy lines like one of GG’s pictures. After the blue, she added green swooshes before picking up a black crayon and drawing a box around her swooshes. Her tongue stuck out of her mouth as she evaluated her work.

Drawing GG was always the hard part. Sometimes he had hair; sometimes he cut it all off. Sometimes he had whiskers; sometimes his face had a big beard like Santa. Even still, sometimes his face felt like skin. That one was weird; she didn’t like that one. Right now he had hair and some whiskers, but not a Santa beard. 

With a nod she started drawing his head first. Black hair. Then gray over top. Gold eyes. A nose. A mouth with his ciggy pop. Then she did a black shirt and drew jeans. No shoes. GG didn’t like shoes either. Then, his arms. His arms were hard to color. He had too many pictures on his arms.

Once she was done, she smiled. GG was going to like it. She just knew it. The teacher didn’t seem to like her drawing, but she knew GG would. It was him and one of his own pictures. If Billy could draw his Daddy riding a bike, then she could draw her GG making art. She couldn’t very well draw him making kissy faces with Grandpa Jay. That would be weird. And he only ever did two things.

When she gave the picture to him later he really liked it and even said the words Mommy said she wasn’t supposed to copy. He even hung it up in the room where he made art. He said art should be surrounded by art before tickling Bella’s face with whisker kisses. She liked when GG was happy. It made her happy, too.

Present Day

Currently there was a bridge in Gabe’s home studio. It wasn’t like it was permanent or anything. Just semi-permanent he supposed. It had wheels that locked in place when he needed them to. It was high enough where he could sit above large pieces for better coverage, but low enough that he was actually able to work from it. Usually he used it for pour pieces, or if he was building something and needed a little extra height. Today he wasn’t entirely sure what he was doing. 

He was laying on his stomach, hovering over his current project which had accidentally taken up most of his studio. It was so large that he was going to have to figure out how he was eventually going to get it out of his studio, but that was a problem for another day. A large piece of plywood was on the floor, pieces of wood lining the edges, like he was pouring concrete. On top of it was a six foot by six foot canvas (okay, a couple of smaller canvases carefully superglued together) lay in the middle of the room. On the bridge with him, he had a container with carefully layered acrylic paint, a container of an oil and additive mixture, a container of white paint, and a container of bleach. 

The corners had been where he started. He saturated the canvas in bleach, wanting to see how it would affect the next step. Then he had poured the oil. He wasn’t sure how well the oil would do, even with the additives. The goal was for something solid, but translucent. After the oil, he poured the paint mixture. The colors had spread nicely, and he was sure that when he looked at the cameras mounted in the corners of the room, he would have some good shots for YouTube and TikTok. 

Now, he was pouring white paint into the spots where paint hadn’t settled yet. Currently it was just a wet mess, but there was potential. If his drying experiment worked, it could turn out nice.

As he worked a white light began to flash by the door. It had been a compromise for having his home studio in the house. A light in the studio was rigged to flash one color when someone rang the house doorbell, and another color when someone hit the buzzer outside the studio door. It was the only way he wouldn’t be scared out of his fucking mind when someone was trying to get his attention. He’d destroyed more than a couple potential pieces due to getting so caught up in his work and not realizing someone was there. This system worked better than anything else they’d found. He’d always responded better to light than sounds anyway.

He probably looked insane. His hair was sticking in every direction. His glasses were in his hair somewhere. The parts of his face not covered by his respirator were dotted in paint. Hell, his respirator had more paint on it than was probably healthy, too. He was wearing pink dish washing gloves, but his arms were still covered in paint, as were his ancient jeans, and his bare feet. He probably should have put on his coveralls on, but he actually hadn’t realized how messy this project was really going to be.

“Wear a mask if you’re coming in. The paint fumes are pretty bad. The additives attached to the paint molecules and it’s pretty toxic up in here.” He warned. Due to the materials he worked with, the studio door was always locked when he was in here. If it was Bella at the door, she would have an adult with her, but she knew if the door was closed, she wasn’t supposed to bother him anyway. 

A couple of minutes later, his husband walked into the room, snapping the baby gate in place behind him. Bella knew not to come into the room, but if the door was open, the dogs would try. The baby gate had definitely helped with that. 

“You were not kidding about the smell. How are your eyes not watering?” Jay blinked a couple of times before coming over to the bridge to get a better look at what Gave was working on. “Is it bonding?” He slid his hands up the back of his thighs as he stared at the paint for a couple of minutes.

“No.” Gabe admitted, sounding too sullen for his own good. More often than not his art experiments didn’t work, but he had done a few smaller test pieces and thought this one would work. Maybe the canvas and plywood combination wasn’t strong enough for all the paint. “I have a combination of sealer and resin I’m going to pour, but I think it needs to set before I try that.”

There was a quick swat to his ass as his husband pulled away from him. “Good. The girls made dinner.” He must have pulled a face because Jay continued on. “It is, unfortunately, inedible. Juliet just got back with pizza.”

He wanted to be surprised that he lost six hours, but it happened when he got pulled into a project. “Oh thank fuck.” He sat up and pulled his gloves off, dropping them onto the bridge before shimmying onto the ground. “I’m starved.”

His husband didn’t respond. The other man was watching the colors shift under the soft light lamp in the room. It didn’t surprise Gabe at all. He could always tell if a piece was worth continuing by the look on Jay’s face. All the critics in the world could fuck off. The only reaction and feedback he ever needed was from Jay. He swore that he could live off his reactions to his art alone. 

Setting his glasses down on one of his work stations, he picked up another piece of plywood. “Help me put this over the frame? Juliet’s asshole cat keeps figuring out how to get in here.” He’s pretty sure it wasn’t until he moved around that Jay noticed the state he was currently in. 

“Yeah, you’re going to need to shower before you come anywhere near the dining room.” 

Gabe laughed. “You gonna come in with me and make sure I get all the paint off?” He wagged his eyebrows at him.

“Briel, the girls are right outside.” His husband replied, but he could see the amusement on his features.

He huffed, but he probably would have been more surprised if he’d said yes. Grabbing his paint splattered phone, he started towards the door that led into the wet room, instead of the door Johnny had come in through. “Hey, Jay?” The second his husband looked in his direction, he snapped a quick photo. “For the reference folder.”

As he closed the door to the wet room, he heard two things. The first was his husband muttering something about him being incorrigible. The other was the sound of the wood being shifted. It was the last sound that put the smile on Gabe’s face. 

Even if he couldn’t get the paint to set, this piece was a winner.